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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.

Top Gear Tonight: African Road Trip to find the source of the Nile (Part 2)

The last episode of Top Gear Series 19 – episode 7 – airs tonight as the second part of the ‘Christmas Special’ to find the source of the Nile in Africa. According to Jeremy Clarkson, the reason we had no Top Gear last autumn, and the reason we’re seeing the Top Gear Christmas Special to find the source of the Nile in Africa in £1500 estates now, is that the BBC schedules were too crammed with stuff like the summer of sport, Strictly Come Dancing and I’m a Z-list Celebrity. But if the viewing figures for part 1 of the Top Gear special to find the source of the Nile are anything to go by, the Beeb would have been better airing Top Gear than the Autumn fodder of ‘reality’ shows last year, as Top Gear stuffed the current reality show – Dancing on Ice – in last Sunday’s ratings.

VW picks Browning to head U.S. operations, reports say

Volkswagen has picked former General Motors and Ford manager Jonathan Browning to head its U.S. operations, reports said Sunday. Browning, 51, would succeed Stefan Jacoby, who left Volkswagen of America in June and last month became CEO of Volvo Cars.