Toyota Vista 1999 Rear Right Door Assembly [0013300] 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.

Aston Martin enters V12 Vantage (2009) at Nurburgring 24hrs

Aston Martin V12 Vantage race car By Ben Pulman First Official Pictures 27 April 2009 09:52 Aston Martin will enter a V12 Vantage in the 37th Nurburgring 24-hour race on 23-24 May, along with ‘Rose’, the yellow V8 Vantage that was first entered at the infamous ‘Ring race in 2006. Aston claims the V12 Vantage racer will be pretty close to production spec, bar a revised suspension set-up, some safety modifications (a roll cage) and a reduced kerbweight (goodbye stereo system and other goodies). There are also new Pirelli P Zero slick tyres.

Watch Tesla Model S testing new titanium armor

In a missive signed by Elon Musk himself, Tesla announced it would be adding titanium plates and aluminum deflectors to all new Model S sedans and offering free retrofits for the 20,000 or so existing EVs. The company earlier offered an over-the-air software update to raise the ground clearance of the Model S so the car would be more likely to clear dangerous road debris. The actions were in response to well-publicized fires in the electric luxury sedans.