Yanmar Impeller 119593-42202 on 2040-parts.com

2007 Interior Motives Design Awards

Now in its fifth year, the annual design awards ceremony hosted by Interior Motives magazine was held on the second press day of the 2007 Frankfurt Motor Show. The awards are open to design students from around the world and are judged by senior designers from the world's leading carmakers and suppliers. The competition encourages students to submit their work in any of nine different categories, with the emphasis on interior design.

McLaren MP4-12C Spider (2012) first official pictures

For the naysayers who continue to decry McLaren's MP4-12C for a supposed lack of visual and visceral drama, the British supercar maker has unveiled this: the new 2012 McLaren MP4-12C Spider. Mechanically identical to the newly updated MP4-12C coupe, the Spider gets a unique retractable hard-top to keep out the rain, just in time for its wintry lanch in November 2012. How is the McLaren 12C Spider's folding roof unique?

Video: Jaguar's Julian Thomson on the importance of design values

Jaguar's Head of Advanced Design, Julian Thomson, appeared at this month's PSFK Conference in London giving a talk on design values. Thomson's talk, ‘Concepting Dreams, Making Reality Happen', dealt with questions of creating a design story as well as how Jaguar uses the value of its heritage while keeping things original and new. Thomson – the man behind the 2010 C-X75 and the recently revealed F-Type – said, "You can't get a good design story if you don't look at your heritage, where you came from, where your values came from." He went on to discuss the ‘sad years of Jaguar', from around 1968 to 2004 where Jaguar was too timid to develop and "essentially made the same-looking car." He put this down to a reluctance on Jaguar's part to move too far away from its successful models and, quite interestingly, because "not only did we start doing market research, we started asking Americans what they wanted." Watch the full video on the left.