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Cars that make your jaw drop.

It's really sad that the sporty Fusion models are no longer offered. Ford put all their eggs into the Mustang basket and said fuck it.
 
Is ford even selling any cars besides the mustang? I think they killed fiesta, focus, fusion, taurus, everything...
 
Kornholio said:
It's really sad that the sporty Fusion models are no longer offered. Ford put all their eggs into the Mustang basket and said fuck it.
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I had one as a rental last year and it ripped. I didn’t expect it. Problem is from the outside it looked like a $25k rental. It had plenty of grip due to the tires and AWD but I wouldn’t say it really had great handling.

Neat car, just didn’t sell due to price vs image. Real sleeper tho.
 
Mr Pepsi said:
Mustang will probably end up being it's own brand and Ford will just make trucks and vans.
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Kornholio said:
That would just be weird. :2cents
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That's the way the industry is going. FCA already spun off Ram as its own brand. They discontinued all of their cars except the challenger/charger I think. Who knows how long they will last. They survive on Jeep and Ram.
 
From the Wall Street Journal, May 3, 2018, The Real Reason Ford is Phasing Out Its Sedans (paywalled, but you can find it at archive.vn):

Last week Ford announced that it would wind down U.S. production/sales of passenger cars—excepting its Mustang and the sort-of-sedan Focus Active—in favor of more popular and profitable trucks, SUVs and crossovers. By 2020, 90% of Ford’s North American sales will consist of larger vehicles with lower fuel economy, because nothing bad ever comes of that.

Ford noted the accelerating shift in consumer preference from cars (sedans, hatches, coupes) to beefy vehicles. And how. Sales of car-based models fell nearly 11% in 2017 (AutoData); while sales of pickups, SUVs, crossovers and vans rose 4.3%, to 10.9 million. That was about 60% of all light-vehicle sales.

Isn’t it lucky that Ford’s most profitable vehicles are also its most popular? Later on I’ll propose a more direct through-line.

Someone in the WSJ office said it was the end of an era. It’s more like the beginning of the 1990s, when Ford, outsmarting federal fuel economy standards, built and marketed the hell out of the Ford Explorer, which as a light truck was subject to lower standards.

The Explorer set off the SUV craze and a decade-long size spiral in vehicle design, culminating in such absurdities as GM’s Hummer H2 and Ford’s own Excursion SUV. That party ended with the oil price spike of 2000s, but I guess Ford CEO and president Jim Hackett is too young to remember. Now, as then, Ford and others are exploiting a well-crafted loophole in fuel economy regulations that makes bigger more profitable. In 2011, the industry won a change in the EPA’s calculation of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE). The “footprint rule”—which refers to the area within the perimeter of the four wheels—calculates a vehicle’s fuel economy as a function of its size. The rule change effectively incentivizes building larger vehicles by holding them to progressively easier standards. As a result, the largest and most profitable vehicles also enjoy the lowest relative costs of compliance. The rule change also constituted a backdoor tariff on more efficient imports, but that’s another story.
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My 2017 F-150 got 22+ MPG and my 2019 Ranger gets 23-24 MPG . How exactly is that bad? That's extremely economical consider what they are.
 
The stance looks stupid as does the wastegate dump location. And it needs some period correct wheels.
 
Abacinator said:
The stance looks stupid as does the wastegate dump location. And it needs some period correct wheels.
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Yes, but this looks badass.

20181205-_99A1950.jpg
 
Turbo LS, how original. It would look 10000000000X better with a hood and without the stance camber. And the modern steering wheel does not work.
 
I think a good chunk of them are junkyard truck engines with 180k miles on them and an ebay turbo. Plumbed... to... sorta make boost. Sometime.

In fact, I know of a couple of these. Sure, they make cheap power, but not for long and not very well.

Also, open turbo tells me they didn't account for a proper air filter (cuz a proper air filter is going to be huge) and/or DGAF and this thing was never meant drive more than on and off a trailer.

Which is fine. Not everything has to be a racecar. But why bother with a 'TURBO LS, YO' if there is no function to it? Cheap power in a car that doesn't run? Why? I think a Merc CDI or Bluetec diesel would have been much more interesting.
 
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