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IDSA's 3D-printed car design contest gets underway

Aspiring designers have the chance to see their 3D-printed car designs launched down a miniature model of a ski jump and crash in the Launch Day 2013 competition due to take place at the 2013 IDSA conference, which runs from 21-24 August. Up to five designs can be entered for free until 12 August in the competition, organized by The Industrial Designers Society of America. All submissions will then be judged for both aesthetics and for "using unique attributes of 3D printing" which will whittle them down to just 10 designs that will be printed before the launch.

Jaguar Land Rover – Clever Finance Deal

JLR releases £170 million by financing cars in transit Car makers have been begging lines of credit from wherever they can in the last year as the recession has bitten hard in to their finances. Jaguar Land Rover started off down the Government Loan route, but it soon became clear that the strings attached to any Government sourced finance where unacceptable. But in a sign that the future of JLR looks pretty rosy JLR managed to secure £175 million in private financing back in August as part of a bid to raise £500 million, and Tata have refinanced the loans used to acquire JLR.

Aston Martin drops Cygnet city car

Autocar is reporting that the diminutive Aston Martin Cygnet has been dropped from the company’s portfolio. The automaker, now owned by Prodrive and private equity firm Invenstindustrial, will focus on its “core product range,” also known as “good cars.” Autocar posits that the justification for the Cygnet was to continue producing V8 and V12 cars, while keeping its average CO2 emissions down. The Cygnet shared bones with the Toyota iQ city car and used a 97-hp, 1.3-liter engine and got 58.9 mpg using the U.S.