Mercury Force O/b 90 Hp Wiring Harness on 2040-parts.com

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.

Porsche Macan out playing in the desert ahead of an L.A. debut (video)

Porsche Macan (pictured) out playing in the desert ahead of an L.A. debut With Porche’s baby Cayenne – the new Porsche Macan – due to make its public debut in production guise at the Los Angeles Auto Show next month, Porsche has been busy building up interest in what should be their biggest seller in the years to come. There’s already a microsite for the Porsche Macan where Porsche has been busy teasing those who are interested with snippets of information and disguised photos, but now we get the Macan out frolicking on the sandy desert dunes in Dubai, the sort of video you’ll see from any car maker with a vehicle to show off that has off-road pretensions.

VW Touareg R-Line arrives & Volkswagen cut price of VW CC

Volkswagen has launched the Touareg R-Line in the UK with sporty looks and extra equipment,  and cut the price of the VW CC. A lot of VW’s SUVs – big and small – do conspire to look a bit bland in standard guise, so to give sales a bit of a boost VW is busy rolling out the R-Line option to tart up their cars a bit. Latest to arrive is the VW Touareg R-Line – Volkswagen’s biggest SUV – which gets the full R-Line makeover with a sporty take on the Touareg’s look by adding new butch bumpers and side skirts, the addition of a set of 20″ Tarragona alloys, R-Line badges – inside and out – and panoramic roof.