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Ford ReviewsLaunched in a converted factory in 1903, Ford Motor Company created a number of methods for large-scale manufacturing of cars using elaborately engineered moving assembly lines. One of the largest family-controlled companies in the world, the Ford Motor Company has been in continuous family control for over 100 years. |
A top speed of over 140mph. Zero to sixty in less than 7 seconds. A composed suspension and jellybean-sleek sheet metal that still looks handsome after all these decades. That’s the 1989 Ford Taurus SHO, but Sergio Perfetti’s example is more than the sum of its historically relevant parts. And not just because it’s won two consecutive endurance races in the 24 Hours of LeMons on a $500 budget.
With Dodge decidedly losing the torque-war in the heavy duty pickup truck segment, it’s up to Ford and GM to battle out the pickup truck war of the decade. In this corner we have the 2011 Ford F-250 Super Duty Diesel sporting the lightly retuned 6.7L turbo engine that is currently king of the pickup truck hill at 800ft-lbs. For 2011, Ford decided to drop the problematic 6.4L Navistar diesel engine in favor of an all-new, all-Ford 6.7L twin turbo V8 cranking out 400HP and an incredible 800lb-ft of torque. Connected to the ground via Ford’s 6R140 heavy-duty TorqShift six-speed automatic transmission, the amazing feat of engineering is not that the engine can make this much twist, but that the transmission can take it.
While my invitation to the media burnout fest musta been lost in the mail, I attended a regional ride/drive event to cover the four new engines in the 2011 Ford F-150 as compared to some of its domestic competition. The afternoon included a fairly-lame autocross, a (short) drag strip and real world tests, unladen and towing. The product specialist made a point to ask everyone to tell their friends about this event. Luckily for Ford, I got a lot of people to tell.
We’ve seen the sequence too many times before. Enthusiasts beg GM and Ford to offer their international products in the U.S. They offer one. It fails to sell. It gets canceled. Nevertheless, Ford plans to replace its entire small-to-midsize lineup with vehicles developed in and primarily for Europe. So this time it had better work out. First up: the subcompact Fiesta. Read More >
After driving the Chevrolet Camaro SS for a couple of days, and enjoying the experience much less than I expected to, I began to question my expectations. Perhaps having the Lexus IS-F for a week had unfairly put the Chevrolet in a bad light? After all, the IS-F was twice the price and a Lexus, so of course the Detroit Oshawa, Ontario iron seemed coarse in comparison. The obvious test: a 2011 Mustang GT 5.0.
Okay, everybody, take out your old Waitresses or Bouncing Souls songbooks, and sing along with me:
I know what girls like
I know what chicks want
I know what girls like
Girls like
…the Ford Edge.
Ford’s rolled 400,000 Edges out the door since the model was introduced five years ago. For reasons I cannot understand, it completely obliterated the Flex and the Freestyle/Taurus X at dealerships, outselling them combined by a factor of two or three in most months. Half of the Edges sold are registered to women, which likely means that far more than half of them were selected by, and are driven by, women. According to Ford, among buyers in this segment, “styling” ranks as the #5 reason to buy a vehicle, but Edge buyers rank “styling” as the number one reason they chose one.
So here’s the new one. Ford has made a solid effort to address the Edge’s shortcomings. It has more power, less weight (in some models), better brakes, and a much higher-quality interior. The dynamic package is significantly improved, and I had the chance to test that in a literally life-threatening situation, as we’ll see below. None of this will matter too much to the Coach-bag set, however. They’ll be blown-away by the new “myFord Touch” system… and if you care at all about the state of in-car electronics, you will be, too.
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For many Americans, the words “Ford Fiesta” dredges up memories of a crappy claustrophobic tin can that fights the Geo Metro for the title of Worst American Small Car of the decade. The only time I ever wanted a fiesta was during a drunken weekend in Cabo, but the fiesta in mind had more to do with Cabo Wabo than Dearborn Michigan. Of course “Mr Euro” types know that the Fiesta has changed considerably since it last visited our shores, and as Jack Baruth found out at Ford’s Fiesta launch fiesta, Ford’s subcompact is now the most Euro-thentic subcompact on the market. But how well will a Fiesta actually handle an American commute? Ford lent me a baby-poo yellow example for a week to answer just that question.
Reviving a legendary nameplate inevitably invites comparisons. As is often the case, those for the new 2010 Ford Taurus SHO have not been favorable. Judging from reviews, forum postings, and (I’ll predict) the comments below, the 2010 lacks whatever made the original legendary. Well, I drove the original SHO back in 1989. And now I’ve driven the 2010 for a week. For better or worse, the similarities outweigh the differences. So, what’s missing in the SHO’s revival?
If you read my Mustang GT introduction and Performance Pack on-track test articles, you know that I am an unabashed fan of the 2011 Mustang GT. On a road course, it is very probably the fastest normally-aspirated ponycar in history; it’s certainly the best-conceived, best-assembled, and most satisfying ponycar I’ve ever had the pleasure of driving.
The 2011 Shelby GT500 hasn’t received quite the amount of media attention devoted to its five-liter little brother, but it is packing two significant upgrades. There’s an SVT Performance Pack, which includes larger forged-aluminum wheels, revised suspension settings, a 3.73 axle ratio, and a unique Goodyear F1 Supercar tire. Ford has also taken advantage of a unique “Plasma Transferred Wire Arc” process to create an aluminum 5.4-liter V8 that makes 550 horsepower, ten more than last year’s iron-block monster. The payoff is a 120-pound weight savings.
Lighter, stronger, better-handling. Let’s go to the track.
A year ago, with gas prices high and the survival of the domestic auto companies never more in doubt, the media settled on the Ford Fusion Hybrid as the best evidence that Detroit deserved to survive. Roomy, reliable, economical, and fairly affordable, the FFH seemed to tick off all of the boxes. But what about love? Read More >
So where were we? Oh yes. After wandering the earth (and working in a call center) for the first few months of 1995, I ended up at a very small Ford dealership located in the heart of Columbus, Ohio. On my first day, I was paired with another fellow who was also starting out at the dealership. I’ll call him… Rodney. He was an outgoing, cheerful thirty-one-year-old man who looked remarkably like the Colt 45-commercial-era Billy Dee Williams. Rodney was very interested in the dealership’s demo program, because he didn’t own a car. Every day he walked from his apartment a mile or so away, and every night he walked back home. The general manager took pity on him and broke the thirty-days-of-service-before-a-demo rule to put him in a Ranger Club Cab.
I started slowly at the dealership but by the time the 1996 model year rolled around I was regularly one of the top two or three guys on the board every month. More importantly, I was the most effective advocate in the shop for the Red Carpet Lease 24-month program. One month I moved 16 units and leased 14 of ’em. At least three of those were people I’d had to dissuade from writing me a check for the whole car on the spot. That’s right, I converted cash buyers to lessors. Why? There was a fifty-dollar spiff.
I was eventually rewarded for my performance by being permitted to order my own demo, just like the 55-year-old Brylcreemers who had been serving at the store since before ‘Nam. I knew exactly what I wanted. Start with a 1996 Thunderbird LX, black with beige interior. Add just three options: Compact disc player. Power Moonroof. And, most importantly, a 4.6 “mod motor”. The order was accepted at the factory. I was four weeks away from my ‘Bird. But Rodney had some other plans involving Ford’s aging coupe…
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As I exit Turn Eleven at Summit Point Raceway’s twisty, concrete-lined “Shenandoah” course, I’m confronted with a rare opportunity to put my money where my mouth has been. In a review of the 2011 Mustang GT 5.0, I perhaps foolishly opined that “C5 Z06 pilots will need to find a twisty road lest they be run nose-to-tail down long freeway sprints.” Now I’ve found myself fifty feet behind an enthusiastically-driven C5 Z06, and it’s squatting with full throttle up Shenandoah’s Bridge Straight. This will be a straight drag race, and for extra irony it’s going to occur on a road course. Four tires chirp. Sixteen cylinders sing. Forty to one hundred and ten miles per hour. Up a hill. Was I wrong? Can the mighty five-point-oh hunt for Corvettes?
You can spell favorite both ways – the American way, with a single ‘o’ – and the British way, with a ‘u’ following suit. The Ford Fusion and Ford Mondeo are not unlike this fascinating grammatical phenomenon: they both come from the same manufacturer, and they both answer the equally strong demand for misize cars on both sides of the ocean – but they both differ in execution. Right?
Everybody knows a “Mr. Euro”. Hell, you may even be “Mr. Euro” to your friends. Mr. Euro is the guy who, for some reason, wants the cars he cannot have in the United States. He’s the guy who says he would drive a 520i “in a heartbeat” given the chance, the dude who thinks we’re missing out because the Renault Twingo stays on the froggy side of the pond, the fellow who desperately wants a Vauxhall Zafira for child-lugging purposes. I still fondly remember the conversation I had with a similar fellow, whom I shall call “Mr. JDM”, around 2004 or so:
“I would buy a Japanese Skyline sedan in a heartbeat, if only they would bring them here, and I’m not worried about the money.”
“Good news. They did. It’s called the Infiniti G35. Allow me to drive you to the dealership so you may make your cost-no-object dream a twenty-nine-thousand-dollar reality.” Alas, the grass is never so green when it’s cut into sod and shipped to our lawns, and perhaps that’s why so many Mr. Euros find themselves conspicuously absent from the lists of Saturn Astra or VW Rabbit owners. It’s also possible that the loudest voices on the Internet buy the fewest cars, which would also explain why the current Ford Focus has been such a roaring success despite the heretical nature of its US-only design and execution.
Powered By Ford. There’s something special about those words, something iconic, something that evokes a grand American scope, from the first cross-country trips in a Model T to a majestic GT40 hammering down the rain-soaked Mulsanne straight. Powered by Ford. It’s the logo stamped into the cam covers of the five-liter Mustang, but you won’t need to raise the hood to understand what it means. The first time this majestic engine swallows through its thirty-two adjustably timed valves and bellows a crescendo through its twin exhaust, it will be more than crystal clear.
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