Ford 3D-printing Mustang out of chocolate and candy for Valentine's Day

Is your beloved in love with the new 2015 Ford Mustang? Do they like chocolate (that's a trick question – everyone likes chocolate)? Are they a bit of a futurist? Then this Hallmark holiday, you need to get them this Ford Mustang, 3D-printed in sweet, delicious chocolate.

Ford is teaming with 3D Systems' Sugar Lab in LA to produce the super-accurate pony car confections in both chocolate and sugar candy varieties. The process kicked off with a CAD rendering of the 2015 Mustang, which was then programmed into the 3D printer. After a bit of work from the machine, a four-inch long, two-inch tall Mustang was the result. Why the tieup with 3D Systems, though?

"We wanted to create something fun to show that while 3D printing made these edible Mustangs, manufacturing-level 3D printing was used in the development of Ford's all-new sports car," said Paul Susalla, Ford's supervisor of 3D printing.

While Ford commissioned the chocolatey Mustangs, buying some for your sweetheart might be tougher. This is a one-off deal for now, although Ford is in talks to license the Mustang candy, should it find a solid reception.

Ford has put together a surprisingly interesting video of the 3D printing process, which we've embeddedbelow. There's also an official press release, as well as a full gallery of the process.

This post originally published here.

Ford celebrating 80 years of Aussie utes as it prepares to shutter Oz manufacturing

Ford is ending Australian production after 90 years in 2016, and with it may go perhaps the most iconic vehicles in its auto market – the ute. Car-based pickup trucks like the Ford Ranchero and Chevrolet El Camino were always more of a curiosity than a true market force here, but in Australia, they have long proven hugely popular.

As the legend goes, Ford invented the niche after a farmer's wife had asked Ford Australia's managing director for a more utilitarian car. Her request was simple: "My husband and I can't afford a car and a truck but we need a car to go to church on Sunday and a truck to take the pigs to market on Monday. Can you help?"

Ford's design team came up with a two-passenger, enclosed, steel coupe body with glass windows and a steel-paneled, wooden-frame load area in the rear. The sides of the bed were blended into the body to make it look more unified, and to keep costs down, the front end and interior were based on the Ford Model 40 five-window coupe. Power came from a V8 with shifting chores handled by a three-speed manual. Within a year, the new vehicle was ready, and production began in 1934. Lead designer Lewis Bandt christened it the coupe-utility.

It proved to be a success in Australia's rural areas, and in 1961, Ford added the ute bodystyle as an option on the Falcon. It has remained an important part of the Australian Falcon to this, and 455,000 of them have been sold since introduction.

Unfortunately, the history of the ute might be at an end. With Ford ending Australian production, it looks like the end of Australian-market exclusive vehicles, and in the near future, there might not even be a suitable rear-wheel-drive car-based chassis to build utes on. "Ranger will remain as our leading Ute / pick-up post the end of Falcon Ute production," said Sinead Phipps, Communications Director at Ford Australia, in an email to Autoblog. Scroll down to get the full scoop on ute history in the press release.

This post originally published here.

NHTSA probing Ford Escape over throttle issue

Filed under: Government/Legal, Safety, Crossover, Ford

According to the Associated Press, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is training its gaze on 2005-2012 Ford Escape. According to the report, the federal safety agency has opened a probe at the behest of the North Carolina Consumers Council, which petitioned for an investigation following a pair of complaints related to throttle issues.

The council noted in its petition that Ford has previously acknowledged a problem with hesitation and stalling in Escape models, as it has issued a series of technical service bulletins to its dealer body to deal with the issue.

The NHTSA inquiry is not a full-blown investigation at this time and there is no recall pending. No crashes or injuries have been reported due to the problem, but up to 1.6 million examples of the popular crossover could be affected if NHTSA's study does trigger a recall.

NHTSA probing Ford Escape over throttle issue originally appeared on Autoblog on Sat, 06 Oct 2012 18:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: www.autoblog.com

Think Rally and Rallycross are similar? Ken Block's car begs to differ

Filed under: Motorsports, Videos, Hatchback, Ford, Racing

If you've ever wondered about the "hybrid" in Ken Block's Ford Fiesta H.F.H.V. (Hybrid Function Hoon Vehicle), then this video is definitely worth watching. After winning the Olympus Rally near Shelton, Washington, Block's Fiesta headed to Las Vegas for the fifth round of Global Rallycross (GRC). The same car is used in both racing series. As you'd imagine, racing on narrow dirt back roads Washington is very different than running on the mostly paved course at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Aside from the chassis and most of the body components, the Ford Fiesta that raced on Sunday September 23 is almost completely different from the car that practiced on Thursday September 26. The entire powertrain gets swapped in favor of a setup making over 600 horsepower, and the front-mounted radiator is moved aft for the GRC event. To ensure proper air flow to it, different side vents and a vented liftgate are installed. The GRC car also gets bigger brakes and the proper wheel/tire combo. After three days of disassembly and reassembly, this Fiesta is ready for Rallycross.

Sure, it'd probably be easier to just have a second, dedicated GRC car, but where's the fun in that? Scroll down to watch the video of what it takes to transform Block's Fiesta from a gravel-spewing Rally America car to a ramp-jumping Global Rallycross car.

Continue reading Think Rally and Rallycross are similar? Ken Block's car begs to differ

Think Rally and Rallycross are similar? Ken Block's car begs to differ originally appeared on Autoblog on Sat, 06 Oct 2012 16:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ford, GM win Breakthrough Product awards from Popular Mechanics

Filed under: Europe, Safety, Technology, Ford, GM, GMC

Tucked between an avalanche airbag and a 3D desktop printer, a Ford engine and General Motors' crash avoidance system were named two of Popular Mechanics top 10 breakthrough technology award winners for 2012.

Ford's three-cylinder 1.0-liter Ecoboost engine collected one of Pop Mech's honors by providing power through turbocharging and fuel efficiency through its tiny displacement. While the internal combustion engine has been around for more than 100 years, it's not often that it undergoes such a dramatic improvement.

"We placed the bar incredibly high when we set out to design this engine," said Joe Bakaj, Ford vice president, Global Powertrain, in a news release. "We wanted to deliver eye-popping fuel economy, surprising performance, quietness and refinement - and all from a very small three-cylinder engine.

GM's crash avoidance system is a big step toward creating self-driving cars. The system, which debuted in the GMC Terrain, uses a camera mounted near the rearview mirror. It follows the lines on the road to ensure the Terrain stays between them and can detect objects that might be in the way.

While many carmakers are introducing similar systems, Popular Mechanics notes that GM's is "the first practical and cost-effective single-camera vision system for crash avoidance in passenger cars."

Ford, GM win Breakthrough Product awards from Popular Mechanics originally appeared on Autoblog on Sat, 06 Oct 2012 13:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How Detroit is being dragged down by the ills of Europe

Filed under: Europe, Chrysler, Ford, GM, Earnings/Financials

Big Three Bracing For Bad News From Overseas



Folks in Detroit could be in for some bad news in a few weeks, and that has nothing to do with who they're planning to vote for in the upcoming election.

In fact, General Motors and Ford will be rolling out their third-quarter earnings just in time for the presidential balloting, and while the U.S. economy has buoyed the industry at a level few might have expected at the start of 2012, the latest quarterly numbers will be hard hit by events on the other side of the Atlantic.

Between them, General Motors and Ford are likely to lose in excess of $500 million - some analysts put the red ink closer to $1 billion - for the July-September quarter. And for the full year, the domestics could run up a deficit closer to $4 billion if you include Fiat SpA, the Italian partner of Chrysler, according to analysts' consensus estimates.

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Paul A. Eisenstein is Publisher of TheDetroitBureau.com and a 30-year veteran of the automotive beat. His editorials bring his unique perspective and deep understanding of the auto world to Autoblog readers on a regular basis.

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Continue reading How Detroit is being dragged down by the ills of Europe

How Detroit is being dragged down by the ills of Europe originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 04 Oct 2012 19:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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2013 Ford Explorer Sport

Filed under: Performance, SUV, Crossover, Ford, Quick Spins

Ford has had nothing but great success with its latest, three-row iteration of the Explorer SUV, with buyers finding it a suitably good driving tool for the jobs demanded by family living. And while I've never found the naturally aspirated 3.5-liter V6 that inhabits the engine bay to be anything less than well-suited to this large SUV/CUV class - it wasn't so very long ago that a 290-horsepower, 24-mile-per-gallon-highway six-cylinder would have seemed like a real tough guy - it has never been a particularly exciting powerplant, either.

Enter the 2013 Explorer Sport, with an EcoBoost twin-turbocharged version of that 3.5-liter six, and 365 horsepower with 350 pound-feet of torque to show for it. I should add that the extra shove only comes at the expense of one highway mpg and one city mpg, relative to the four-wheel-drive iteration of the non-turbo Explorer, which is nice, too. Ford was kind enough to invite me to take a taste of this hotted-up Explorer recently; an experience that I found generally pleasant, if not entirely satisfying.

Driving Notes

• We eat with the eyes first. If your particular set of peepers isn't enamored by piano black accents, then you may not get close enough to even test drive the new Sport, as this model is slathered with shiny black highlights. The big black grille dominates the Explorer, and I think does a good job of making the large vehicle look a bit more compact - lower and meaner. The matching black on the 21-inch wheels, body cladding, roof rails and mirror caps, along with smoked covers for the front and rear lighting, seems like overkill to me. To many it'll just make the Explorer look cooler than ever. Some of us like Original Recipe, some like Extra Crispy.
• There's no question in my mind that the Sport version of the Explorer feels fleet-of-foot for a vehicle of this size and weight. Ford was coy about official 0-60 times for the model, saying only that it had found it to be "two seconds faster" than the 3.5-liter non-turbo model.
• Floored from a standstill, the EcoBoost six will hesitate to deliver full thrust for a heartbeat or two, then offer a fairly strong torque pop once the engine is spinning at about 2000 rpm. Middle revs are where this engine eats, however, and I found passing maneuvers on the highway to be easy to execute briskly in the 70-90 mph zone. A decent little exhaust growl is in evidence at high rpm, too.
• So the Explorer Sport is fairly quick on its feet and looks mean (at least to some), but it doesn't actually go so far as to acquit itself as a full-on performance model, à la a Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8, or BMW X5 M, for instance. That's not just because the Ford isn't as quick, but also because the chassis and suspension tuning is still balanced more toward highway comfort than aimed at outright handling performance. The Sport is stiffer laterally than the standard SUV, where an added tower brace makes itself felt, but there is still a fairly high amount of vertical movement through the suspension when the Gs pile on.
• The retuned electric power steering is quicker to turn in (again, that stiffer front section helps here), and accurate when holding a fast line, but it's absolutely lifeless in terms of feel and feedback from the road.
• The Sport is equipped with paddle shifters to modulate the six-speed automatic, but response time is slow and the physical feel of the paddles is pretty unsatisfying.
• All-in, the Explorer Sport is kind of a performance middle child; more like a motored-up version of the original than a full sporting variant.
• I have mixed feelings about that last bullet, in terms of my own conclusion about the Sport. On one hand, starting at $40,720 (including destination and delivery), the Sport is only about $2,600 more than the high-content Limited trim, with a much more powerful engine, similar EPA fuel economy and many of the same standard options. (The Sport comes standard with 4WD, leather, MyFord Touch, SYNC, etc.) On the other hand, the Sport doesn't use its extra go-juice to push many of my "enthusiast driver" buttons, I get no extra towing capacity from the increased power and torque (5,000-pound max), and once the options sheet starts coming into play, a $50,000-Explorer can be a reality. The MSRP for our tester was a heady $48,385.
• I think Ford is counting on just enough incremental sales from the Sport to make the variant worthwhile in a model that is just killing the rest of its segment. Plenty of former Mustang-owning Dads should be willing to pony up a slightly bigger lease payment for the payoff of winning a stoplight grand prixs here and there. Plus, you know, cool wheels.

2013 Ford Explorer Sport originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 03 Oct 2012 14:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: www.autoblog.com