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Sturgess Jaguar is the Franchised Main Dealer of the Year 2013

The dealer experience can make or break your relationship with a car brand, so having a strong, high profile group of main dealers that offers not just a showroom full of cars, but staff who are knowledgeable, helpful and prepared to go the extra mile, makes the difference. So Jaguar will be suitably chuffed that not only did March see them deliver their best sales results ever but that one of their main dealers – Sturgess Jaguar in Leicester – has been named Franchised Main dealer of the year in the Motor Codes Garage of the Year Awards run by Motor Codes, a government-backed operator of codes of practice for the motor industry. Motor Codes had 11,500 garage users rate their experience of of customer service in garages across the UK, and Sturgess came out on top in the Main dealer Franchise gong thanks to its “transparent, customer-focused approach and its all-round efforts to accommodate all types of customer requirements”.

Fitness-focused autonomous vehicle pedals to victory in Interior Motives Design Awards

Earlier tonight, on the eve of the first Paris Motor Show press day, the world's top designers and automotive journalists assembled at L'Espace Clacquesin in Paris to witness sponsors Ford and Volkswagen announce the 2014 Interior Motives Student Design of the Year: ‘Life Cycle' by Jason Chen and Dirk Wan of the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, USA. Launched in January of this year and themed ‘Beyond Styling: a Design for Life', the competition asked students to create projects around three diverse but specific briefs: ‘Beyond Autonomous', which posed the question of what would happen if we were to combine the latest developments in computing and robotics with automobile design; ‘An Interior for Life', in which students were asked to focus on one feature or element of a car's interior and adapt it for dual use in a user's ordinary life; and ‘Pickup Truck of 2030', which challenged the young designers to extrapolate what the future might hold for this popular and versatile mode of transport. This year's contest attracted more than 200 entries from students based at 57 schools in 24 different countries.

Video: Aston Martin design chief on new Rapide

CAR recently caught up with Aston Martin design chief Marek Reichman – on board one of the first Aston Rapides to be built. You can watch our video interview in the player below, as CAR contributor Guy Bird interviews Reichman. He talks about the new Rapide, and why it shouldn't be seen as a rival for a Merc S-class or even a Porsche Panamera, the crazy new Cygnet – a Toyota iQ by Aston Martin – and the new million-pound One-77 hypercar.