2013 Pilkington Design Awards winners announced

Royal College of Art Vehicle Design graduates Nir Siegel and Ian Slattery have taken top honors at the 26th annual Pilkington Vehicle Design Awards, held at the RCA in London. Jaguar designer Earl Beckles presented the award for Best Design Interpretation to Siegel for his Audi Genesis project, a vehicle that builds itself using 3D printing technology to the user's specifications, providing a new kind of owner experience. Beckles said that Siegel's idea was fresh and innovative, while also carrying an interesting story and development process.

Mercedes S400 Hybrid – and a facelift as well

Mercedes S400 Hybrid launched - and a facelift for the S Class Range [ad#ad-1] Mercedes has long held the ‘Best Luxury Car’ mantle, despite build quality issues in the early part of this century, but the competition, particularly from Audi and BMW has got stronger with each model change, so they have to keep upping their game (and the new Jaguar XJ may make them up it even further before long). So we knew it time for a facelift for the current S Class, but Mercedes has decided to link that with the launch of the first S Class Hybrid – the S400 Hybrid. The S400 Hybrid gets a 3.5 litre V6 petrol engine, which on its own delivers 279bhp, but linked to an electric motor it gets a 20bhp boost and a big jump in torque.

Call for ban on on vehicle-side advertising

ALL ADVERTISING and promotional banners on commercial vehicles should be banned as they are distracting to other drivers and tempt them to use mobile phones while driving. This is the call from Flexed, a car leasing company, which has carried out a survey that shows a quarter (23%) of drivers admit to trying to type a website address into smartphone after seeing an advert on a lorry. A further 10% of drivers admitted they had tried to take a camera phone photo of an advertisement on a commercial vehicle to use later.