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Video: Chris Bangle delivers “Empowerment: Design without Designers” talk at Creative Mornings/London

Chris Bangle – the undisputed front man of car design – needs little introduction, so the prospect of the former BMW Design Director and now founder of Chris Bangle Associates giving a talk in our home town of London was too good to pass up. His presentation (which you can watch in full in the video to the left) touched on his time at BMW, but was more focused on the idea of empowering others to create: "design without you in the middle", as Bangle says. From the story of the co-creation of the staircase in his Italian studio to the idea of encouraging people to think about their culture when designing, his philosophies transcend disciplines.

Los Angeles auto show 2009 photo gallery

By Ben Pulman Motor Shows 02 December 2009 20:40 Browse through the photos at the 2009 Los Angeles auto show on this page. We've got the latest pictures of all the important debuts at LA's motor show – and we'll be adding more photos in the next few hours.CAR's reporting team in Los Angeles is filing pictures back as soon as the covers are whisked off the important new cars – from the VW Up! Lite to the Honda P-Nut, Porsche's new Boxster Spyder to the Cadillac CTS Coupé.Don't forget to read the exclusive CAR Live Blog filed live from the 2009 Los Angeles auto show.

Driven: BMW 6 Series convertible

Every large BMW coupe – from the E9 3.0 CS, through the shark-nosed E24 6 Series, Claus Luthe's beautiful E31 8 Series, right up to the outgoing, Bangle-era E63 6er – has had an exoticism beyond every other car in the brand's range. We drove the latest from the most southern point of Europe back to our London office to find out if it too is a truly Grand Tourer. Stepping off the 'plane in Gibraltar, greeted by a Deep Sea Blue 650i with Ivory White leather, 19-inch rims and Shadow Line exterior trim under the early summer Mediterranean sun, it's clear that the right colorway and a more appropriate setting certainly help the F12's cause after our disappointment with the car at its debut in Detroit earlier in the year.