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Michelin Challenge Design competition celebrates 10 years

Michelin has released a short video documenting the last ten years of the Challenge Design competition. With excepts from jury members Freeman Thomas, Director of Advanced Design at Ford; Victor Nacif, VP of Design at Nissan Design Europe; Geza Loczi, Director of Design at Volvo Monitoring Concept Center; Dave Marek, Advanced Design Director for Honda North America; Steward Reed, Chair of Transportation Design at ACCD; Frank Saucedo, Design Director of GM's Advanced Design Studio in California and Chris Chapman of BMW Designworks USA, the video outlines some of the 2700 entries Michelin has received since the competition's inception in 2002. That year, the MCD display at the NAIAS in Detroit featured cars from European design houses.

BMW Classic Center opens to customers

Great news for vintage BMW owners: The German automaker has opened its Classic Center to customers. BMW says global demand for its vintage cars and motorcycles is growing. Its 200 clubs have about 200,000 members, and the company estimates there are 600,000 classic BMWs on the road--and those are just the ones the company knows about.

Toyota ends powertrain deal with Tesla

To the surprise of no one, Toyota has announced the end of a partnership with Tesla that gave rise to the slow-selling RAV4 EV, which will be replaced by a fuel cell car next year. Toyota has said that it can't meet California's zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate profitably with electric cars, but it thinks it can make money, or at least not lose so much of it, with fuel cells. Toyota signed a $100 million joint development deal in 2011 with Tesla, to build powertrains for its RAV4 EV.