Mazda hires VW alum Derek Jenkins to head U.S. design staff

Former Volkswagen designer Derek Jenkins has been hired to be the design chief for Mazda in America. Jenkins, 39, fills a position vacated last summer by Franz von Holzhausen, who left to take the top design post at electric-vehicle maker Tesla Motors. Jenkins had been chief of design for the Volkswagen Group in North America, which he joined in 2000.

Used '80s dream cars, an AW list

Ah, the '80s--the time of big hair, MTV and underpowered cars. The decade wasn't a total loss, though. You could find a few diamonds in the rough.

Spyker B6 Venator Spyder concept to debut at Pebble Beach

The Spyker B6 Venator Spyder Pebble (B6 Coupe pictured) looks to be heading for a debut at Pebble Earlier this year we managed to trawl through the rather dry annual report from Spyker and discovered that plans were afoot for a Spyder version of the B6 Ventador Concept we first saw at the Geneva Motor Show in March. We managed to follow that up with the news that we’d heard a convincing whisper that Spyker were planning to give the Venator Spyder a full public debt at Frankfurt in September, but ahead of that would reveal the B6 Spyder to attendees at this year’s Salon Prive first. That whisper has now been given additional credence with a report from Autoblog that a voice in Spyker has revealed that the B6 Venator Spyder will actually get its first outing at Pebble Beach in less than three weeks.