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One Lap of the Web: Moonbuggies, the first car phone and a romp in the snow with an EVO

We spend a lot of time on the Internet -- pretty much whenever we're not driving, writing about or working on cars. Since there's more out there than we'd ever be able to cover, here's our daily digest of car stuff on the Web you may not otherwise have heard about. -- Obama named Charlotte, N.C.

Who's Where: Satoshi Wada to open independent design studio

Satoshi Wada, former Senior Designer at Audi AG and Nissan Design Japan, is set to open his own design studio. Called SWdesign TOKYO, his ambitious plan follows on from a growing line of design managers who have left successful OEMs to establish their own design practices. Wada, who resigned from Audi AG in Ingolstadt earlier this month, told CDN he is aiming "to create a new vision with my own independent design studio in Tokyo".

Jag Land Rover factory closure ‘already decided'

Jaguar Land Rover management has already decided which UK factory to close – and the decision will be announced this autumn in 2010. The car making group, which manufactures around 250,000 cars a year, operates out of three UK sites: Castle Bromwich and Solihull near Birmingham, and Halewood near Liverpool. Those sorts of volumes are more normally associated with a single factory or, at a push, two.