Ford Motor Company pulled the wraps off the next-generation 2021 F-150 on Thursday night, revealing a new body and face that’s evolutionary in nature and a powertrain addition that sets its apart from all rivals. Could you call it revolutionary?

Being first in its class to offer something new is key for the F-150, being America’s best selling vehicle and all. In this case, that feature is a hybrid powertrain — one Ford says will make the F-150 the most potent light-duty pickup on the market.

There’s also added inches where it supposedly counts (Read More…)

If the last few months have taught us anything, it’s that you can keep people isolated in their homes without any negative consequences whatsoever.

Sure, we’ve seen articles from scientific journals like The Lancet warning that similar experiments run on a much smaller scale resulted in psychological stress and disorder, including low mood, insomnia, stress, anxiety, anger, general irritability, emotional exhaustion, paranoia, drug abuse, depression and post-traumatic stress symptoms, but where’s the evidence of that happening this time?

Don’t answer that.

Employers the world over are already seeing the benefits of remote work and have begun to consider how to make it a long-term proposition. In addition to protecting companies against any new COVID-19 outbreaks, stay-at-home orders mean paying for less office space and utilities. Automakers are starting to think this is a pretty sweet deal — especially with productivity not having taken much of a hit — and are now considering whether to extend at-home employment indefinitely.  (Read More…)

At this point, if Ford wants to keep the upcoming Bronco and Bronco Sport under wraps until their respective unveilings, it had best invest in surplus anti-aircraft batteries — or just never leave the confines of company-owned production facilities. Even those walls have proven a porous barrier, however.

As the weekend dawned, drone-provided aerial spy photos appeared of the two dissimilar Broncos congregating with a Chevrolet Colorado ZR2 out in the desert, far — at least, one would assume — from prying eyes. (Read More…)

Insisting earlier in the week that its scheduled debut date for the new Bronco was simply a coincidence, Ford has nonetheless found itself forced to push back the model’s reveal even further.

The automaker unintentionally made waves after its planned July 9th reveal of the reborn off-roader (already deferred by the pandemic and resulting trade show cancellations) coincided with the birthday of O.J. Simpson — a man forever linked to the vehicle following his low-speed 1994 cruise into infamy.

Everyone noticed, including the sister of Nicole Brown Simpson, whose 1994 murder — along with that of friend Ron Goldman — sparked the trial of the century. (Read More…)

Even before the pandemic and subsequent economic crash, much talk was being made about living in your car. Specifically, the vehicle of choice would be a spacious yet efficient van. It continues to this day in many corners of the Internet.

Ford apparently took this discourse to heart, reportedly adding a new feature to the upcoming 2021 F-150 pickup that makes home ownership unnecessary. (Read More…)

Ford brought back the Mustang Mach 1 to offer buyers an involved, hands-on, track-worthy driving experience, but the Mustang Mach-E arriving next year will offer the ability to go hands-off. New hardware and software, combined with extensive mapping of certain divided highways, will see some Ford vehicles gain the ability to cruise without a driver’s hands on the wheel, starting in the 2021 model year.

The long-expected tech addition catapults Ford into the big leagues of Level 2 autonomy, rivaling General Motors (Super Cruise) and Tesla (Autopilot). Like the others, this feature still falls short of any “self-driving” or “fully autonomous” label. At least Ford’s system has something Tesla’s doesn’t. (Read More…)

By now, most Americans are sick of seeing the inside of their own homes, but not everyone falls into that camp. There’s pros to go with working from home that, in some cases, outweigh the cons.

Ford Motor Company, which sent 30,000 U.S. employees home amid the coronavirus pandemic, wants to hear from this cohort on whether remote work should become the status quo. (Read More…)

The Bullitt and GT350 appear dead for 2021, but fear not. Those who find the Ford Mustang GT just a tad underwhelming can soon opt for a Mach 1, which combines various attributes of those three aforementioned cars in one retro package — though perhaps not as retro as some would like.

It’s also not as plentiful as some ‘Stang fans would prefer, either, going on sale in the spring of 2021 as a limited-run model capped at, well, no one knows how many units. (Read More…)

Your author was once a CNN addict. As soon as cable TV reached his humble childhood home, you could find him sitting cross-legged in front of that 20-inch set, absorbing a flood of diverse, on-the-scene news reporting taking place in a number of locales outside the Beltway. It was like Opposite World compared to today.

And yes, that impressionable youth stayed up late the night of June 17th, 1994, watching a certain white SUV make its way down an L.A. freeway. Twenty-six years later, the iconic nameplate that famously ferried the guy who played Detective Nordberg from Naked Gun (there was a football career, too, I’m told) is back, due for a July 9th reveal.

What are the odds that the (deferred) debut date happens to be the birthday of that infamous Bronco occupant? (Read More…)

Ford’s utility vehicle lineup may grow too crowded to sustain the midsize Edge and its Lincoln Nautilus sibling for much longer. That’s the opinion of AutoForecast Solutions’ Sam Fiorani, who claims the Blue Oval has cancelled next-generation versions of both models.

Introduced for the 2015 model year and facelifted for 2019, the two-row Edge and Nautilus (formerly, the MKX) slot between the compact Escape and three-row Explorer, but the appearance of new models in the coming years might trample these models into the dust. If so, it could spell the end of Ford’s vehicle manufacturing presence north of the border. (Read More…)

Ford has weathered heavy criticism for moving bunk transmissions for some time. Normally, that conversation revolves around the PowerShift DSP6 (aka Getrag 6DCT250) installed in passenger cars with names beginning with the letter “F.”

The unit turned out to have a laundry list of problems and ultimately created a ruckus between management, engineers, and Ford’s legal team. Concerned that scrapping the dual-clutch automatic at the last minute would prove a costly decision in the midst of our last economic recession, the manufacturer ran with it — only to be confronted with annoyed consumers who felt the transmission wasn’t anywhere near up to par.

While the DSP6 is the unit that gets top billing for What Were They Thinking: The Movie, it wasn’t the only transmission prompting headaches in Dearborn. Another Getrag-sourced unit, the MT82 six-speed manual, is allegedly a sore sport for Mustang drivers. Owners of 2011-2019 model year Ford Mustangs are now suing the manufacturer for delivering what they claim is another faulty product.  (Read More…)

On Wednesday, Ford Motor Co. announced two safety recalls. One is a brake line issue involving 343,900 F-150 pickups equipped with the 3.5-liter EcoBoost V6. The other relates to door latches — an obnoxiously familiar headache for the company — and encompasses a whopping 2.15 million vehicles from the 2011-15 model years.

Ford says the affected vehicles may not have had all door latches correctly replaced or replaced at all when repaired by dealerships under safety recalls 15S16 or 16S30 — both of which were done fix faulty equipment that was susceptible to failure in direct sunlight.

Apparently, the thermal threshold of the parts wasn’t all that impressive,and a few doors popped open while vehicles were in motion. While the manufacturer said it was unaware of any injuries related to the incidents, having a door randomly pop open on the motorway is universally undesirable.

Ford is going to take another whack at it.  (Read More…)

For its last model year before swapping to an all-new platform, Ford plans to offer the much-loved Mustang in a hot new shade of orange. Tangerine now pairs with the orange-adjacent, almost peach-like Chamois.

Apparently, customers can have their ‘Stang — downsized severely just in time for those recent OPEC shenanigans — in whatever flavor they desire ahead of Dearborn’s new Fox-bodied successor. T-tops, which appeared last year, can be had by any hatchback buyer, while the King Cobra joins the roster for those who find the Cobra II package too tepid.

Read on for more details. (Read More…)

It’s been a rough go for Ford Bronco fans. Just when they thought they’d get to feast their eyes on a real, physical, reborn Bronco, the pandemic arrived and pushed everything back. No glitzy premiere at the now nonexistent Detroit auto show, just tears.

The returning model’s debut is now set for sometime in July, likely early in the month, but photos of a manual-transmission model leaked to the web are better than nothing. (Read More…)

Shifts are returning to Ford Motor Company plants across North America, with the automaker claiming Thursday that full production will return sooner than you might think.

At the same time, Ford dropped details on when consumers might expect to see an electric vehicle that hauls heavy loads, rather than steals past glory and heritage from one of America’s most beloved vehicles. (Read More…)