Ford promised a performance improvement in the 2018 Mustang and they weren't kidding, pitting the prancing pony against Porsche's 911. Final performance figures for the refreshed car have been revealed today, and it seems it's not just the styling that the 2018 Mustang borrows from its GT350 sibling. Indeed, we're looking at the fastest production Mustang GT ever made.
Ford's F-150 may be the US' best selling vehicle, but now the pickup has been drafted into police service. The 2018 F-150 Police Responder is the first pickup to be pursuit-rated, good for chases at sustained speeds of 100 mph. Meanwhile, Ford has sent the truck back to the engineering lab to get a full makeover for active duty.
Ford is making one of the most entertaining features of its hotter pony-cars standard on all 2018 Mustangs, and it's going to get smoky. Until now, electronic line-lock has only been available on the Mustang GT with its V8 engine. As of the new model-year car, though, it's going standard across the range.
Ford promised something different with the 2018 Expedition and 2018 F-150, and that's coming under the hood. The upcoming SUV and truck will pack an all-new V6 engine, Ford has confirmed today, in addition to adding an updated turbocharged engine with the most power of an EcoBoost so far. It's part of what the automaker says is a push to coax more economy out of its bigger vehicles.
How do you make the Ford Focus RS better? Ford decided the easiest way to do that was to ask its most vocal fans what they wanted to see, and the result is this, the 2018 Limited-Edition Focus RS. Set to be produced in vanishingly small numbers, it's the culmination of a driver wishlist we can totally get behind.
Ford is having a huge management shake-up, with CEO Mark Fields being replaced with the automaker's former smart mobility and self-driving car head. Fields, Ford says today, will retire, with Jim Hackett taking over as Ford Motor Company president and CEO. Most recently he'd been executive chairman of Ford Smart Mobility, the startup that the automaker created to tap into new markets including ride-sharing, mixed-mode transportation, and autonomous vehicles.
Ford is rolling out Apple CarPlay and Android Auto to its earlier SYNC 3 cars, with a hotly-anticipated update for its model year 2016 vehicles. SYNC 3 version 2.2 will be available both via a dealer-installed update and via a DIY method, with owners able to load the new software onto a USB stick themselves. However, for the first time, Ford will also offer an over-the-air update as a third option, part of its shift to bring some smartphone-style thinking to its infotainment platforms.
There's not much point in calling your local Ford dealer and asking for a test-drive of the 2017 Ford GT. With 750 of the limited, 1,000-strong production run already claimed - that's all the cars Ford plans to make for the next three years - and competition likely to be fierce when the automaker opens up the application process for the remaining handful, the GT puts the "super-rare" in supercar. If you can't try it yourself, we can do the next best thing: tell you what the Ford GT is like after having been behind the wheel ourselves.
There are few moments in life so memorable that they burn deep into every single fiber of your body. For me, one such moment came the first time my index finger pushed up against the 2017 Ford GT’s ignition start button. Two years after the GT’s shock unveil at the 2015 North American International Auto Show, the build-up of anticipation until I was behind the wheel and seated inches in front of the mid-mounted 647 horsepower, 550 lb-ft of torque twin-turbo EcoBoost V6 engine could’ve gone one of two ways. As the hardly-tamed beast roared to life, would the GT live up to its supercar promise?
There's one thing we can all agree on: the 2017 Ford F-150 Raptor is big. In the words of former NHL goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov, it's 'humongous big,' even, a mass of steel and aluminum that expands to spill over the edges of every parking spot and muscles its way across the white line onto all highway shoulders (if not sidewalks). It's a truck that weighs enough to crater the ground below should you ever screw up enough courage to take it off a really sweet jump, and it's long to the point where its back-up camera should probably come with its own back-up camera and satellite tracking of the area immediately around the vehicle - just to make sure.
Ford should make you sign a contract committing to go to the track every weekend before they'll sell you a 2017 Shelby GT350. This 5.2-liter V8 Mustang may be related to the affordable coupe that bears the same nameplate but, by the time Ford Performance is through, it's a very distant cousin. To be worthy of the rearing snake badge, the GT350 has to be more than special: it has to be capable of putting fear into Porsches.
Most full-size SUVs tend to fall into one of two design categories: forgettable family blobs, or frighteningly massive hunks of truck-based steel. The 2017 Ford Flex, however, proves that you can package exceptional practicality in something that's been styled to be distinctly different from the vast majority of its people-moving brethren. Even more impressive? The Flex manages to stand tall alongside the competition while riding on one of the oldest platforms in the sport-utility segment.
