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Ford Cortina: 50 years ago today…

Ford are celebrating 50 years since the first Ford Cortina was launched and changed the car landscape forever. The Ford Cortina went on to sell an impressive 4.3 million during its twenty year life, eventually turning in to the Ford Sierra and then in to the Ford family car of today – the 2013 Ford Mondeo (which, interestingly, can be had with the 1.0 litre EcoBoost engine – smaller even than the 1200cc of that first Cortina). That first Cortina was the start of Ford’s dominance of the UK car market, leading to an unbroken run of 35 years as the best selling car brand with most of the Cortinas, almost 3 million of them, built at Dagenham – in the days Ford actually built cars here.

Design Sevices: MCE Design Workshops

Independent design studio Motorcity Europe (MCE) is launching another series of two- and five-day design workshops aimed at broadening the skills, experience and job prospects of anyone working - or looking to work - within the field of automotive design. Based on the massive success of the MCE Summer Seminars, these follow up workshops in February 2010 will be an intensely improved version, open to all skill levels of design. Top sponsors including Autodesk, Wacom and RLE Int'l will also be supporting this event.

'Gran Turismo' pays tribute to Senna with 'Ayrton's Wish'

Back in October, "Gran Turismo" announced a partnership with the Ayrton Senna Institute. We're finally starting to see the fruits of that labor -- a Senna-edition Playstation 3 bundle in Brazil notwithstanding. The first element of a month-long tribute from publisher Polyphony Digital is the above 20-minute film, "Ayrton's Wish." Two months before Imola, Ayrton told his sister Viviane that he wanted to give back to the country that so idolized him.