99 00 01 Ford Explorer Chassis Ecm 31894 on 2040-parts.com

Exclusive: Pierre Castinel resigns from Head of Design role at Tata

Tata's Head of Design, Pierre Castinel, has resigned from his post to accept a position at PSA, Car Design News has learned. Castinel was originally hired to develop the design direction and form a brand identity for Tata's full line of vehicles, including cars, pickups, SUVs, MPVs, trucks and buses, but things haven't been going well at the Indian automaker. According to insiders, Tata closed Castinel's design studio in the British midlands last year, forcing the UK-based team to move into the automaker's engineering center in Warwickshire.

McLaren P1 Nurburgring record time is…a fiction for designers inspiration

The source for the story was an image taken from a Chinese website showing the McLaren logo and a time board showing the P1 as having done a lap of the Nurburgring in 6:33s. The image was real, but the story wasn’t. It seems the image was part of a ‘Mood Board’ McLaren put together when they were designing the P1 to inspire their designers with what could be possible, and that’s found its way on to the Interwebs in China.

VW Touareg BlueMotion Hybrid for Detroit

VW are revealing the 2010 Touareg at the Detroit Motor Show including a BlueMotion Hybrid VW are taking the whole ‘Eco’ game seriously. They are rolling out ‘BlueMotion’ versions of cars across the range at regular intervals, the most recent being the sub 100g/km Golf BlueMotion. But most of these are tweaks to the suspension, aerodynamics and ECU of existing diesels to coax the best returns on emissions and economy.