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Contest: Volkswagen Slipstream wins 2007 LA Design Challenge

Volkswagen's Slipstream concept has won the fourth annual Design Challenge competition, part of the Design Los Angeles automobile designer's conference. The award was presented during the second press day of the 2007 Los Angeles Auto Show.  The theme of this year's competition, RoboCar of 2057, asked eight automotive design studios in California to form their vision of the future by depicting a vehicle that incorporates artificial intelligence engineered to make life easier and more attractive to consumers 50 years from now. Designers entered two-dimensional renderings and concept descriptions predicting how the rapidly advancing field of artificial intelligence will integrate into the automobile to make life safer, more practical and attractive, and the entries were judged by multi-discipline design professionals who selected the winner based on its originality of creative concept, integration of robotics and level of adaptation to a variety of environmental conditions and consumer needs.

Chevrolet to pull out of Europe

General Motors is ‘strengthening’ its ‘European brand strategy’ by pulling Chevrolet out of mainstream markets in Western and Eastern Europe. This is ‘largely due to a challenging business model and the difficult economic situation’ – but does not mean that Chevrolet is set to disappear entirely. On Bing: see pictures of European Chevrolets Find out how much a used Chevrolet costs on Auto Trader Instead, Chevrolet ‘tailor its presence’ by offering only select ‘iconic’ vehicles from the marque’s global portfolio.

CDN - Opel/Vauxhall Interactive Competition - Exterior Phase Update

There are less than two weeks left for European design students to submit their exterior entry to the Car Design News - Opel/Vauxhall Interactive Design competition. The competition, which closes to entries on Friday February 11th, asks students to design a lounge exterior, based around the design of one of the three finalists of the interior competition. To register and view the brief go to www.cardesigncontest.com Students must base their exterior design around one of the designs by either: Victor Uribe and his ‘Opel City Lounge' - a maglev-inspired, levitating lounge in which users can sit in a variety of position thanks to the reconfigurable maglev interior surfaces.