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Volkswagen Group names Paefgen head of classics program

You may remember the name Franz-Josef Paefgen. Until recently, the German engineer and executive was head of both Bentley and Bugatti. Before that he was chief executive of Audi, after working for several years at Ford. He technically "retired" earlier this year, but like the cars he helped create, an executive like Paefgen could never really retire. So it should come as little surprise that the Volkswagen Group has named Dr. Paefgen head of its Classic program.
In his new capacity, Paefgen will oversee the historic automobile activities of the entire VW Group, including those of Volkswagen, Seat, Skoda, Audi, Lamborghini, and of course Bentley and Bugatti. It strikes us as a suitable semi-retirement for the man responsible in no small part for the Bugatti Veyron and Bentley Mulsanne, to name just two, and who was decorated in 2006 by the ACO as the "Spirit of Le Mans" for his contribution to endurance racing. Read the official announcement after the break.

Race Recap: Abu Dhabi GP is reversals, luck, leanness and last dances

We weren't sure if Alter Ego Nico Rosberg, the one who flew into Brazil and showed Mercedes AMG Petronas teammate Lewis Hamilton that he knew also knew how to grab an entire race weekend by the scruff of the neck, arrived in Abu Dhabi. In both Friday practice sessions Hamilton showed Rosberg the way. Then on Saturday, Alter Ego Rosberg took over, taking the last Free Practice session and then pole position by a whopping four-tenths of a second over Hamilton. Thanks to the gimmicky and soon-to-be-obliterated spectre of double points, if Rosberg won the race and Hamilton finished lower than second, the World Championship would remain in German hands. Behind Hamilton came the Williams duo, again, with Valtteri Bottas ahead of Felipe Massa. Daniil Kvyat did swell to put his Toro Rosso in fifth, Jenson Button was just as swell getting his McLaren into sixth. Kimi Raikkonen outqualified his Ferrari teammate Fernando Alonso for the third time this year, the pair taking seventh and eighth on the grid. Kevin Magnussen lined the second McLaren up in ninth, Jean-Eric Vergne making the top ten for Toro Rosso in his last race for the team. To be clear, that was the final grid for race: Daniel Ricciardo and Sebastian Vettel had both qualified in the top ten but were sent to the back of the grid when their Infiniti Red Bull Racing front wings were deemed illegal. They'd start from the pit lane, which was still ahead of Romain Grosjean in the Lotus, who took so many penalties for new engine components that he started the race in Turkey. At lights-out on Sunday, well, it was pretty much lights out. That's when Hamilton got the start of the year, bolting off the line so quickly it didn't take him 100 meters to get in front of Rosberg. The Brit took Turn 1 in the lead, then laid more than a second into the German on the first lap. Rosberg kept close, about 2.5 seconds back, but it was Hamilton's race to lose and everyone knew it; barring a reliability issue or the kind of driving mistake Hamilton hasn't made all year, Britain would have its fourth double world champion. Rosberg was left asking his engineer what kind of strategy they might use to claim first place. That reliability issue did come, but it struck Rosberg on Lap 26 when his entire Energy Recovery System failed, robbing him of 160 horsepower and taxing his brakes.

McLaren F1 designer Gordon Murray creates his own car company

Famed automotive designer Gordon Murray has announced he's launching a new vehicle manufacturing company that will focus on taking innovative car designs into limited-run production. Gordon Murray Automotive says its first car will be a flagship model launched under a new brand that it says will go against the trend toward more complicated, heavier-weight vehicles. Murray is the South African-born automotive engineer and designer of the McLaren F1 who more recently was working on the T.27, a tiny electric city three-seater. The new company is positioned as part of a corporate organization and a sister company to Gordon Murray Design. "The new manufacturing business significantly expands the capabilities of our group of companies," Murray said. "With our first new car, we will demonstrate a return to the design and engineering principles that have made the McLaren F1 such an icon." Murray said its cars will be built on a new version of its highly efficient iStream manufacturing process, which derives heavily from Formula One construction and materials technologies to make low-weight vehicles that require less energy and less factory space to produce. It describes the process thusly: "An iStream chassis is essentially a hybrid structure consisting of a metallic frame (iFrame) and composite sandwich panels (iPanels). The basic concept is to use the iFrame to form a basic skeleton to locate all the local attachment points such as powertrain, steering, suspension and occupant seats etc. The iFrame alone does not meet the performance demands of a modern car, so we then stabilise the iFrame by bonding the highly rigid (iPanels) onto the metallic members so they then act as very stiff shear panels." The process was used on the TVR sports car, which Murray's firm said was as much as 300 kilograms (660 pounds) lighter than others in its class: Murray designed F1 cars that won more than 50 grands prix. Like Lotus, he is obsessed with weight reduction, and has recently worked on small-car projects like the Yamaha Sports Ride Concept. Autocar says Murray aims to keep the cost of his new vehicles low through use of the iStream process, and has said his ideal supercar would weigh less than 2,000 pounds. Whether that's the flagship he speaks of remains to be seen.