Autocar and Courland are pleased to reveal the names of the three finalists of the Autocar Courland Next Generation Award. The winner will be announced at the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders’ (SMMT) dinner on the 27th November at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London.
| Student Jonathan Maynard Roberto Antonio Pace James Benson | University Brunel University Kingston University Huddersfield University | Idea Cooled EGR discharge Cylindrical brake system Car theftprevention system |
Six finalists attended the final judging stage of the 2012 Autocar-Courland Next Generation Award. This was a ‘Dragons Den’ style judging day on November 7th at Haymarket Consumer Media’s offices in West London. The finalists presented their projects to judges from Autocar, Courland International, Jaguar Land Rover, McLaren Automotive, Peugeot, Skoda, SMMT and Toyota GB.
Kevin Gaskell, chairman of Courland Automotive Practice, said: “All of the final six students deserve a very special commendation. Ross Hannah from Bath University, Jonathan Maynard from Brunel University, Edward Bannister from Coventry University, Niall McCann from Bath University, Roberto Antonio Pace from Kingston University and James Benson from Huddersfield University each presented their ideas extremely well at the judging day. The standard was extraordinary. When I say the judges had a difficult time deciding the final three, we really did. All of the students should be hugely proud of their achievements”.
Jonathan, Roberto and James are now invited to be guests of honour at the SMMT annual dinner at The Grosvenor House Hotel, London on the 27th November 2012 when the overall winner will be announced. The winner will be rewarded with an incomparable work experience package comprising one month at each of the contest’s sponsors – Jaguar Land Rover, McLaren Automotive, Peugeot, Skoda and Toyota – as well as £7500 cash.
To enter the competition, students needed to answer in 500 words a brief set by Autocar editor-in-chief Steve Cropley.
The contest was launched in 2009 to offer entrants a unique chance to kick-start an automotive industry career and is run by Autocar in partnership with Courland International and the SMMT. The 2012 award is backed by Jaguar Land Rover, McLaren Automotive, Peugeot, Skoda and Toyota.
The 2012 brief was: “In no more than 500 words, describe an improvement (be it an invention, innovation, a legislative change, a change to corporate policy or the adoption of a new convention) which you believe would be a worthwhile benefit to the UK automotive business. You will be expected to demonstrate an understanding of how such an improvement could be made viable and what the wider implications of it might be.”
Oliver Brunt, the 2011 winner, proposed a new kind of active head-up display, known as SHUD – Social Heads-Up Display – that used sophisticated graphics and could employ the whole of a car’s screen as its ‘canvas’. The SHUD system conveyed a new level of real-time car-to-car communications to provide drivers with a much better standard of information, presented more attractively and without distraction.
