1957, 58 Plymouth Model 849 Radio / Works on 2040-parts.com

Hey Craig Jackson, how did the auction go?

Plenty of people were surprised this week that the original Batmobile sold for $4.6 million* at Barrett-Jackson. And few were more surprised than Craig Jackson, the ringleader behind the mega-million-dollar auction in Scottsdale. The last time we spoke to him, he had estimated the original Batmobile to be worth somewhere around $2 million (later $3-4 million, as he now said).

Italy’s Supercar sales down 80% as Italy heads for 50 year car sales low

Sales of Supercars in Italy have dropped 80% in the last 5 years and car sales look set to drop to the lowest point since 1966. We all know the Eurozone is finally paying the price for stitching together powerhouse economies and basket case ones with the same blunt fiscal tools to control their economies. And even Italy – once a major Southern European economy – seems to be as big a basket case as Greece and Cyprus if you start to dig a bit.

Video: Chris Bangle delivers “Empowerment: Design without Designers” talk at Creative Mornings/London

Chris Bangle – the undisputed front man of car design – needs little introduction, so the prospect of the former BMW Design Director and now founder of Chris Bangle Associates giving a talk in our home town of London was too good to pass up. His presentation (which you can watch in full in the video to the left) touched on his time at BMW, but was more focused on the idea of empowering others to create: "design without you in the middle", as Bangle says. From the story of the co-creation of the staircase in his Italian studio to the idea of encouraging people to think about their culture when designing, his philosophies transcend disciplines.