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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.

Mini Coupé Concept car: showroom bound in 2011

By Tim Swietochowski First Official Pictures 26 August 2009 09:00 Revealed 50 years to the day since the launch of the classic original Mini, this is the stunning Mini Coupé Concept, which CAR expects to enter production in 2011. Just check out the plausible body details of the Mini Coupé, which shares much of the design of the existing hatch, convertible and Clubman below the scuttle to keep costs down. The two-seater Mini Coupé Concept, which will be displayed for the first time at the 2009 Frankfurt motor show, represents a dual effort by Mini to tap into the sports car market currently hogged by the Mazda MX-5.

Audi shows S3 Sportback (2013) – but is a used S3 a better buy?

Here’s Audi’s S3 Sportback, the five-door version of the 296bhp Quattro hot hatch unveiled last year. The S3 Sportback takes 5sec flat to accelerate from 0 to 62mph, that’s one-tenth of a second quicker than Audi’s official figure for its three-door stablemate. That’s because the initial 5.1sec S3 time was only an estimate, and Audi’s subsequent tests have shown the three-door S3 actually dipping below five seconds in the 0-62mph sprint.