Above A preview of some of the locations in Lamborghini’s 50th anniversary convoy.

Cars for a convoy commemorating the 50th anniversary of Lamborghini arrived at Milano today. The Grande Giro, with 350 models from the Italian supercar maker’s stable, will pass through Lombardia, Toscana, Lazio, Umbria and Emilia Romagna, stopping over in Forte dei Marmi, Grosseto, Roma, San Giustino Valdarno and Bologna. After Bologna, where the cars will be by Friday afternoon, they will make their way to Sant’Agata Bolognese, the home of Lamborghini.
   Organizers say that the convoy will be 4·5 km long, and features models ranging from the original 1963 350 GT to the current Gallardo and Aventador. Sixty-five per cent of the drivers are male, the youngest at 22, the oldest at 75.
   The cars meet at the parc fermé in Piazza Castello, Milano at 10 a.m. on May 7 and leave for Bobbio tomorrow.
   Lamborghini was founded by tractor maker Ferrucio Lamborghini, who believed he could out-do Ferrari. It was incorporated on October 30, 1963. The brand was put on the map with the 1966 Miura, a mid-engined vehicle that changed the way exclusive sports cars were configured. Up until then, they were commonly front-engined.
   To some, the Miura remains the most beautiful car ever made, and the credit for its styling, by the house of Bertone, remains the subject of debate today. Some say it was the work of Giorgetto Giugiaro, others Marcello Gandini.
   The Miura was succeeded by the Countach, a dramatic car with “beetle wing” doors and razor edges, styled by Gandini.
   Lamborghini had changed hands over the years, with Chrysler taking a controlling stake in the late 1980s. An investment group took over in 1994. It is currently a subsidiary of the Volkswagen group.

Lauro Atti, David Kaiser and Wolfango.it

In addition to haute couture and costumes, Jean Paul Gaultier has already designed a Coca-Cola bottle and recycling bags. And now he turns his attention to trains.
   Thalys, the ticketing organization run jointly by the French, Belgian, Dutch and German railways, teamed up with Gaultier for this latest venture.
   As an official partner of the exhibition, The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: from the Sidewalk to the Catwalk, held at Kunsthal in Rotterdam from February 10 to May 12, the designer was asked to lend his creative talent to a train bearing his trade mark colours and stripes. The exhibition has been organized by the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal and the Kunsthal.
   Gaultier unveiled the train at Paris’s Gare du Nord on Wednesday, and took it to Rotterdam for the promotion.
   The exhibition features some 140 of Gaultier’s designs, including haute couture and stage and film costumes.
   He says, ‘The idea of giving a train a makeover, of dressing the Thalys train up in sailor stripes, was funny for me and it’s appropriate for Holland. Amsterdam, Rotterdam, the ports of Amsterdam, sailors, sailors stripes and everything else, I found it fitting. And what’s more, stripes symbolize speed.’
   Emily Ansenk, director of the Kunsthal, says, ‘We are absolutely delighted with the arrival of Mr Gaultier today, on the eve of the opening of our spectacular exhibition in the Kunsthal. It is a great honour to have him come to Rotterdam for his exhibition, with his own signature. We have lots of parties in Rotterdam worked out together to make this amazing project a success, for that I would like to thank everyone.’
   Thalys is also offering a discount for passengers should they wish to attend the exhibition, with an entry fee of €10 instead of €12·50, on presentation of proof of travel.
   Gaultier is staying in Rotterdam till Saturday, when he will open the exhibition officially, as well as a Jean Paul Gaultier boutique in the Bijenkorf.

The online poll for the Most Beautiful Car of 2012, run by Eurosport, Festival Automobile International, J. C. Decaux, Bell & Ross, Le Point and Automobiles Classiques, has been won by the new, W176-series Mercedes-Benz A-Klasse.
   In second place was the third-generation Mazda Atenza, followed by the Renault Clio IV and the BMW 3er-Reihe Touring.
   Dropping out in earlier rounds of voting were the Opel Adam, the Peugeot 208 and the Mini Paceman.
   The new Mercedes-Benz A-Klasse is a departure from the innovative hatchback that originally débuted in the late 1990s. The new model is a more conventionally engineered car, losing the clever space efficiency and sandwich floor that made the original A a landmark model.
   It is sleeker and more aerodynamic, challenging established rivals such as the BMW 1er-Reihe and Audi A3. In terms of sportiness, the new car is far more eye-catching, with its sculpted sides and more aggressive stance, in line with how German design is evolving.
   Online voters participated in the competition between December 6, 2012 and January 20, 2013.

Top The new look for Lucire’s web edition home page. Deeper and cleaner than before. Since this screen shot was taken, we’ve made even more improvements.

Leading a redesign is always exciting, especially when there are more quiet news days at this time of the year.
   If you’ve surfed through our home page, or if you’re a Lucire Facebook fan who got word of it in one of our statuses last night, you’ll notice we are phasing in a new look. Only a few pages have it at the moment—we want to iron the bugs out and get feedback before it appears more widely—but we thought we had better get a few pages looking “more 2010s” and give you the sort of reading pleasure you had when you first visited the Lucire website in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
   The changes are numerous, but here are the highlights:

• first of all, we’ve made it easier for you to share to your social networks, and made those sharing buttons bigger if you’re browsing on a smaller screen. We haven’t optimized the feature pages for mobile yet, but the new look will make its way to these news pages, which, as many of you know, are. We’ll go from there;
• bigger type. As screen resolutions improve, the sizes we had specified type at in the 1990s and 2000s seem rather small. So we’ve addressed that;
• bigger pictures. It’s a recognition of better bandwidth these days. However, we haven’t forgotten that a lot of the planet isn’t on broadband, so we’re glad to note that the basic HTML files for the new pages are actually smaller by 1 to 2 kbyte and we’ve optimized the images for downloading where we can;
• fewer ads. We know they can be annoying. With the new look, we’ve largely retired the 160 by 600 skyscraper size. We’re hoping that despite fewer ads, you’ll be encouraged to visit more, so what we make from advertising should balance out;
• comment forms. Finally! While you’ve always been able to send your feedback, and comment on news articles, we haven’t built in any forms for individual feature stories. That will change with 2013 stories going forward;
• and, on the home page, an animation! This is just us having fun. But we think you might like the top stories in a slideshow. It’s nothing new for a lot of our competitors, and we’re playing catch-up there. Now that we have caught up, we hope you like the first five we’ve chosen.

   In addition to the home page, the ‘Volante’ index page has changed to the new look, as have two articles: Sarah MacKenzie’s 2013 BMW X1 first drive and Elyse Glickman’s 2013 Chicago dining guide.
   There are other little changes, such as the disappearance of the callouts, or pull quotes, and much more noticeable ‘continued’ links for multi-page articles. The links to Digg have gone, too.
   We’re still considering whether to remove the descriptions of each article from the home page, leaving only a byline, to make the look even more streamlined.
   It’s a familiar feeling. At the end of 2002, a similar redesign helped usher in the New Year for Lucire, with the first article on designer Megan Tuffery and her residence at the time, Bruxelles. Until then, there were some lavishly designed stories, and ‘Megan Tuffery’s Brussels’ was created to partly standardize the Lucire look and bring in some more lessons from print. Looking at the page now won’t be entirely representative, since it links to a stylesheet that has since been edited. However, if you do, think of much lower resolutions and much narrower browsers—1,024 by 768 pixels was the norm—if you want to re-create the effect.
   Interestingly, this latest redesign may be the first where web and cellphone viewing habits have driven the thinking more than old media.
   Back in 2002–3, that new look was also considered clean—but such is the nature of technology and changes that things get added, cluttering things up. We wonder how long the 2013 look will remain before it, too, needs a serious overhaul. Two years? Less?
   For now, please enjoy our latest efforts—and look forward to these news pages eventually following suit!—Jack Yan, Publisher

HRH the Prince of Wales will honour Sir Terence Conran, FCSD, Sir Peter Moores, CBE, DL, Mathew Prichard, CBE, DL, Sir Gerald Elliot and Lady Elliot, the Lady Rayne, and Dame Theresa Sackler with medals for arts’ philanthropy today.
   Sir Terence’s contribution includes giving £50 million to the Design Museum and its predecessor, the Boilerhouse, over the last 31 years, sponsoring the summer graduates’ show, serving as Provost of the Royal College of Art, and nurturing careers, including that of Thomas Heatherwick.
   In a release from the Design Museum praising Sir Terence, it is said that ‘Throughout his life, whether he is making it, selling it, teaching it or championing it, Sir Terence has simply been an evangelist for good design.’
   The Boilerhouse project in 1981 was initiated by Conran after being inspired by the Triennale in Milano. He was knighted two years later. The Boilerhouse was relaunched in 1989 as the Design Museum. It will have a new home soon at the old Commonwealth Institute building in Kensington, in a space three times larger than its present site. Sir Terence donated £7·5 million to the new premises, as well as the proceeds from the sale of the lease of the old building, valued at around £10 million.
   ‘It’s not just the money,’ says Vicky Richardson, design director at the British Council, in the same release. ‘It’s the support and encouragement he’s given to people he thinks are doing good things.’
   The awards today were determined by the Prince of Wales’ Art Cluster Group, among others. A final panel of artists decided the five recipients. The panel includes Sir Ronald Harwood (writer), Dame Monica Mason (the Royal Ballet director), Christopher Le Brun (artist), and Colin Tweedy (vice-president, Arts & Business).
   Full details of the honourees from 2008 to 2012 are available at www.artsandbusiness.org.uk.

A Lucire special promotion

Each season, Lacoste Live goes to one of the style capitals of the world to look for unconventional talent, and this autumn is no exception. In fact, Lacoste has gone to one of our favourite cities in the world—and one of the places where this magazine’s name is officially pronounced lu-seer—Montréal. It checks out the multidisciplinary artist Julien Vallée and the band Cosmetics.
   Vallée, a Gatineau-born artist, is well known in graphic art, with his work featured globally in The New York Times Magazine and IdN. He uses different objects and materials, giving them new meanings, just as Lacoste Live sees itself doing with each collection.
   Cosmetics, meanwhile, is known for its frozen but emotional electro sound. Band members and Montréalers Nic M. and Aja Emma produce what Lacoste calls ‘stylized, brittle disco sounds that are strangely infectious. Juxtaposing their inherent contrasts with the numerous contradictions that are to be found in their hometown of MTL, Cosmetics create a musical language that is uniquely their own.’
   The Lacoste Live website features Vallée and Cosmetics. You can also check out the autumn–winter 2012–13 collection and the Lacoste Live City Guide by Montréal locals Marc from www.hellskitchen.fr and Sophie from www.totalvelours.com, which you can also contribute to.
   Lacoste Live also has a Facebook fan page, a YouTube channel, and a Flickr account. You can follow Lacoste Live on Twitter and Google Plus.

Post sponsored by Lacoste

Jaguar revealed its new F-type to guests yesterday at the Musée Rodin in Paris, a day before its originally announced date. The specs of the new F-type, Lucire can reveal today, range from a three-litre V6 developing 340 PS, through a similar unit developing 380 PS, to the five-litre V8 developing 495 PS. Maximum torque for the three engines are 450, 460 and 625 Nm—yet the cars can achieve fuel economy of 31·4, 31·0 and 25·5 mpg (Imperial, combined).
   The three models—F-type, F-type S, and F-type V8 S—feature eight-speed Quickshift transmissions, and achieve 0–100 km/h times of 5·3, 4·9 and 4·3 seconds respectively. Top speeds are 260, 275 and 300 km/h. Kerb weight is at 1,597, 1,614 and 1,665 kg, thanks to the F-type’s use of aluminium, including a new aluminium front subframe.
   The F-type even features all-aluminium double wishbone front and rear suspension. The aluminium architecture provides what Jaguar says is ‘the stiffest possible underpinnings for the suspension, with rigidity gains of more than 30 per cent in key areas compared to any other Jaguar application.’
   The two-seater convertibles wear the F-type moniker, linking them clearly to a racing heritage that began with the C-type and the iconic E-type.
   Rather than field grand tourers as it had since the E-type went out of production in 1975, Jaguar has returned to the sports car market with a vehicle that is more purposeful, sized somewhere between the Porsche Boxster and 911.
   In a press release, Adrian Hallmark, Global Brand Director, Jaguar said, ‘Jaguar is a founder member of the sports car segment with a rich sporting bloodline stretching over 75 years, and in the F-type we’ve reignited that flame. The F-type isn’t designed to be like anyone else’s sports car. It’s a Jaguar sports car—ultra-precise, powerful, sensual and, most of all, it feels alive.’
   Ian Callum, Jaguar’s Director of Design, said, ‘A piece of design should tell a story and this is why every line in the F-type has a start, a direction and a conclusion. If you approach every line individually and get it as æsthetically correct as possible, get the dimensions right, it will stand the test of time.’
   Ian Hoban, Vehicle Line Director, said: ‘With the F-type, the Jaguar engineering team focused on delivering greater dynamic driving reward than ever before. To make that a reality, every engineer has had very tough targets to hit: every one of those targets has been met and, in many cases, exceeded, making the F-type a car that delivers precisely the key sporting attributes that we intended.’
   The F-type has been inspired by the 2011 C-X16 concept, and appears muscular and sensual. The interior layout, meanwhile, is what Jaguar calls a “one plus one”: it is asymmetric, and focused on the driver. Even the trim materials differ on each side. Controls are grouped by function, inspired by fighter aeroplanes.
   The base F-type is priced at £58,500, the S at £67,500, and the V8 S at £79,950.

Jaguar’s new F-type sports car will make its global début at the Salon de Paris on September 27. The company’s latest video gives further glimpses into the historical new model, with Jaguar showing F-type bodyshells as well as a camouflaged verification prototype.
   The video has been narrated by Ian Hoban, Vehicle Line Director at Jaguar, who says in a release, ‘When you are working on a Jaguar sports car the expectations of the world are huge. We’re really pleased how the attributes have translated from the virtual simulation work we’ve done into the physical world. Now, we’re refining and adding those last few percentage points—that true element of honing which the Jaguar test team are delivering—which will turn a great sports car into an exceptional one.’
   The new model continues the lineage of Jaguar sports cars that left off with the E-type in 1975. While Jaguar has fielded the XJ-S and the XK models, the company considers those more to be grand tourers. The F-type is expected to be a more nimble and purer sports car, sized somewhere between a Porsche Boxster and a Porsche 911.
   A camouflaged prototype was already seen at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in June, while Jaguar itself has released official images of the F-type with similar camouflage.
   Further details are available at Lucire Men, including the F-type’s engines and features.