Now the Germans say no to Volvo

As we’ve reported in the last few weeks, Ford has been trying its best to offload Volvo, the last of its ‘Prestige’ Euro marques. The Chinese looked to be the best bet, but it seems that that is going nowhere at the moment (the Chinese are probably waiting for Ford to get in to an even deeper mess with the hope of picking up Volvo for peanuts) and now its seems that Ford’s fire-sale has drawn more blanks. Now the Germans turn down the chance to own Volvo Der Spiegel reports that Daimler (Mercedes-Benz) boss Dieter Zetsche has revealed that Daimler has turned down the chance to buy Volvo, and has also revealed that BMW has had a good look, and reached the same decision.

New Skoda Octavia (2013) revealed

The new Skoda Octavia arrives as a third generation offering more room, more efficiency and a new look. Arrives in the UK spring 2013. We’ve had a trio of new cars built on the VW MQB platform  recently – the new VW Golf, the new Audi A3 and the new SEAT Leon – and now we have a quartet with the arrival of the new Skoda Octavia.

Webinars: Autodesk – Concept Modeling with Maya

Autodesk presented its third Webinar in the series entitled ‘Concept Modeling with Maya' that illustrates how the software helps to create concept models. Martin Emila of Autodesk showed how Maya could accelerate the development of a design concept with the help of polygonal modeling workflow, and how it can be integrated into common workflow - starting with first ideation sketch, move to polygon model and continue to surfacing and visualization. Emila's four-year career at Autodesk has largely focused on conceptual design and visualization.