Boxing clever: the new Land Rover January 24, 2012 Right now Land Rover’s design team is halfway through a programme to redesign the world’s most famous 4×4, the Land Rover Defender. The goal is to take the key elements of the iconic car and create a cool, new and modern version of a design that has remained mostly unchanged since 1948. For the time [...]
Volvo hunting for partner to develop compact vehicles January 22, 2012 VOLVO Cars is hunting for a partner to share in the development of its compact models. Chief executive Stefan Jacoby, who took the helm at the Swedish brand when Volvo was bought by China’s Zhejiang Geely for $1.8bn (£1.16bn) in 2010, said a partnership would make sense for the relatively small carmaker to find economies [...]
Ratings agencies won’t be trusted without a fight January 22, 2012 THE Big Three rating agencies hardly seem to be out of the news with their ability to move markets. Following Standard & Poor’s (S&P) decision to reduce its assessment of the health of France’s sovereign debt by one notch to AA+ from AAA status, top German politicians like Michael Fuchs and others have jumped on [...]
CAR TALK January 10, 2012 ECONOMICAL C1 GETS A REFRESH Citroen’s smallest car gets a fresh look for 2012. The latest C1 is cleaner and greener and boast more than 65.7mpg, emitting just 99g/km of CO2 and making it Congestion Charge exempt. It goes on sale in April. NEW MONDEO SHOWS OFF ASTON MARTIN-LIKE GRILL Ford revealed its latest Mondeo [...]
We’re the 100 per cent because we all pay tax January 9, 2012 DEBATES about tax can be pretty taxing – as two recent examples of both sides of the debate embellishing the facts to create outrage out of nothing clearly show. In a recent report, Action Aid found that 98 per cent of FTSE 100 companies had subsidiaries that operated within a tax haven. There are problems [...]
Margaret Thatcher’s legacy is that no-one tries to scrap what the Iron Lady achieved January 5, 2012 THIS isn’t a review of The Iron Lady, starring Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher and on general release in cinemas this week [For this, see p. 18]. I’m sure it’s a fine film and I’ll see it once I can scrape together the money from my dwindling pension for a pair of tickets and some [...]
US CAR MANUFACTURING JUMPS January 4, 2012 US CAR sales jumped in December, suggesting growth in consumer confidence. Chrysler’s sales are up 37 per cent, Ford’s rose by 10 per cent and Nissan’s increased by 7.7 per cent. Meanwhile, factory output rose in November, according to US commerce department data also released yesterday. New orders rose by 1.8 per cent to $459.2bn [...]
Indices hold gains even as euro falls January 4, 2012 MAJOR US stock indices were little changed in a low-volume session yesterday, but some investors were encouraged to see equities avoid a sell-off amid lingering Eurozone debt problems. Indices held on to the previous day’s large gains even as the euro dropped sharply against the dollar. Notably, US banks held up well, even though bad [...]
Techno couture January 4, 2012 Gadgets and fashion are uneasy bed-fellows. Top designers tend to shun technology in favour of tradition: natural fibres are still the go-to materials – despite the progress of nano fibres – and an expert eye is favoured over the laser precision of a computer. Tom Ford went as far as locking out bloggers and banning [...]
The five suits you need this spring January 4, 2012 Recent suit trends have been resolutely one-dimensional – slim. Collections from almost every major designer and Savile Row tailor have been overwhelmingly slanted towards this classic look. The spring/summer collections take this baton and run – but there is a more adventurous feel to the latest trends. Perhaps the most stand-out feature on the menswear [...]