2009 Range Rover Supercharged Custom Celebrity Owned 3m Satin Black Strut Carbon on 2040-cars

Auto blog

A car writer's year in new vehicles [w/video]

Christmas is only a week away. The New Year is just around the corner. As 2014 draws to a close, I'm not the only one taking stock of the year that's we're almost shut of. Depending on who you are or what you do, the end of the year can bring to mind tax bills, school semesters or scheduling dental appointments. For me, for the last eight or nine years, at least a small part of this transitory time is occupied with recalling the cars I've driven over the preceding 12 months. Since I started writing about and reviewing cars in 2006, I've done an uneven job of tracking every vehicle I've been in, each year. Last year I made a resolution to be better about it, and the result is a spreadsheet with model names, dates, notes and some basic facts and figures. Armed with this basic data and a yen for year-end stories, I figured it would be interesting to parse the figures and quantify my year in cars in a way I'd never done before. The results are, well, they're a little bizarre, honestly. And I think they'll affect how I approach this gig in 2015. {C} My tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015 it'll be as high as 73. Let me give you a tiny bit of background about how automotive journalists typically get cars to test. There are basically two pools of vehicles I drive on a regular basis: media fleet vehicles and those available on "first drive" programs. The latter group is pretty self-explanatory. Journalists are gathered in one location (sometimes local, sometimes far-flung) with a new model(s), there's usually a day of driving, then we report back to you with our impressions. Media fleet vehicles are different. These are distributed to publications and individual journalists far and wide, and the test period goes from a few days to a week or more. Whereas first drives almost always result in a piece of review content, fleet loans only sometimes do. Other times they serve to give context about brands, segments, technology and the like, to editors and writers. So, adding up the loans I've had out of the press fleet and things I've driven at events, my tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015, it'll be as high as 73. At one of the buff books like Car and Driver or Motor Trend, reviewers might rotate through five cars a week, or more. I know that number sounds high, but as best I can tell, it's pretty average for the full-time professionals in this business.

Land Rover wins legal battle over Evoque clone Land Wind X7

Luxury carmaker Jaguar Land Rover, part of Tata Motors Ltd, said it won a case in China against local rival Jiangling Motors Corp for making cars that copy features of Range Rover Evoque. Beijing Chaoyang District Court said on Friday that Evoque, whose latest model was launched in 2018, had five unique features that were copied directly in the Land Wind X7 built by Jiangling Motors, leading to widespread consumer confusion. The court ruled that all sales, manufacturing and marketing of the Land Wind X7 must stop immediately and Jaguar Land Rover be paid compensation. The two sports utility vehicles have a similar shape, with the roof and windows tapering from front to back, and near-identical tail lights and character lines on the side panelling. Britain's biggest carmaker had sued Jiangling in a rare move in 2016. Despite widespread and often blatant copying, global automakers generally don't take legal action in China as they feel the odds of winning against local firms are low. Also, a lawsuit can be bad for branding if the Chinese public think a foreign company is bullying domestic competitors. The new Range Rover Evoque will be launched in China in April 2019. Jiangling could not be immediately reached for comment.

Jaguar Land Rover's InMotion takes a stab at carsharing

Jaguar Land Rover's new InMotion mobility business aims to capitalize on the growing carsharing boom and develop other forms of alternative transportation. The first pilot programs kick off in the coming months in North America, Europe, and Asia. JLR owns InMotion, but the company acts independently from the automaker. "As a start-up business, InMotion combines the flexibility and pace needed to compete in the ever-changing mobility sector. It allows us to react quickly to new tech and ever-changing customer demands," Adrian Hallmark, JLR's Group Strategy Director, said in a statement. The 30-person firm intends to develop its own answers to upcoming transport problems and also invest in entrepreneurs to develop those solutions. InMotion isn't yet providing many details about what projects the firm expects to tackle, but the Website mentions carsharing and on-demand delivery services. Establishing InMotion shows that JLR doesn't want to fall behind the current trends in the auto industry. Practically every major automaker is currently pursuing future transportation ideas. For example, Ford recently took a very similar approach when it spun off Smart Mobility into a separate startup. BMW also rebranded its DriveNow carsharing service into ReachNow to also add a future ridesharing service. Related Video: JAGUAR LAND ROVER LAUNCHES NEW TECHNOLOGY START-UP InMotion launched to create innovative solutions, helping customers to overcome travel and transport issues Independent business with the agility and independence to react quickly in mobility sector InMotion will create apps and on-demand services Whitley, 11th April 2016: Jaguar Land Rover has launched InMotion, a new technology business that builds apps and on-demand services to overcome modern travel and transport challenges. Next month InMotion will begin real-world testing of a number of different services such as car sharing and car ownership solutions, across North America, Europe and Asia in the coming months. Adrian Hallmark, Group Strategy Director, Jaguar Land Rover said:"With the development of new apps and on-demand services, InMotion provides us with an opportunity to provide engaging and invaluable experiences to both new and existing customers globally." "As a start-up business, InMotion combines the flexibility and pace needed to compete in the ever-changing mobility sector.