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College Exhibition: IED Degree Show 2009

Graduating students from the three-year post-graduate Transportation Design course at the Istituto Europeo di Design (IED) in Turin, Italy presented a tribute to the Aston Martin brand for their graduate theses. Called "Aston Martin 2025", 17 students in the post-graduate course - led by Fulvio Fantolino, IED's Transportation Design Course Coordinator - employed exclusivity, elegance, sporting style and the idea of sharing and emotion as their design keywords, developing a theme which ultimately saw 13 projects created in Alias or in clay. Aston Martin Design Director Marek Reichman provided the students with useful indications for the final development and a further selection led to the short listing of eight projects that were then produced in 1:4 scale models thanks to collaboration with Cecomp.

Mercedes-Benz to cut production time, halve number of vehicle architectures

Mercedes-Benz is restructuring its global production network to cut the average production time for its models to 30 hours by 2015 from 43 in 2008. "We have increased productivity by 2 percent a year over the last few years. We will be accelerating our productivity efforts," Mercedes production boss Wolfgang Bernhard said during an investor conference that was part of the automaker's plant opening in Kecskemet, Hungary, on Thursday.

Italy auctions government cars

OFFERS started rolling in on unneeded government Alfa Romeo, Lancia and BMW cars, which prime minister Matteo Renzi is auctioning off on eBay as a sign of his seriousness in tackling government waste. Renzi has pledged to sell 151 vehicles by April 16, saying he was taking a cue from the former mayor of Florence - himself - who auctioned off four cars early in his term. Besides cashing in, the government will save on upkeep, maintenance and running costs.