I remember the last reduction in size and weight...it was called Mustang II with the high performance decal of a cobra on the hood. Boy, that was a killer success! Just saying.
Really? Could it be because there was no competition in the pony car market for the first gen? It was a new concept. It's doing pretty well in it's segment now (not withstanding the fact that 2014 sales are going to be impacted by the new car coming out soon). I, for one, don't want to see...
Has the Mustang formula up til now lost money for Ford? I think Ford has the equation exactly right...not building a European/Asian Mustang but rather building an American Mustang to sell abroad. Sounds like you need to buy one of those Subyotas to keep the rest of the world happy. There are...
Colin Chapman (LOTUS god) once said that if he could build a car so light that it fell apart as it crossed the winning finish line he would have achieved his goal. I really don't think any real enthusiast is happy with the weight/mass of most of the current cars today...maybe some of us with...
Hell, I like autocrossing. I'm just not in a hurry to drive an autocrosser on a long cross country trip. Your willingness to drive a serious autocrosser on the street probably makes you a pretty small segment of the total market. Ford is obsessed with a strong chassis because of crash...
If you add "stuff" to a volume it adds weight. You can mitigate that to some extent by making the "stuff" lighter but that usually means more expensive material. Physics suggests that if the 370Z or the Vette didn't have all the stuff they too would be lighter. Neither the Vette or the 370z are...
I must object. A heavier car is no more difficult to balance than a lighter car. The dynamics of lateral/longitudinal G will change as the weight goes up but balance is balance regardless of the weight. If the balance is 50/50 at 2000 lbs the balance dynamic is the same as 50/50 at 4000 lbs...
You can bandaid for poor weight distribution on a race car but when you make those changes you are going to have a car that rides like a buckboard on the street. I've been there. My examples of the Cobra Jet and the LS were illustrative. I had a street Cobra Jet in 1968 for example and it was...
Look at the Z06--- they had aluminum frames and the regular cars had steel frames. How much did that cost? How much more expensive was the Z06? How many more did they sell? Strippers ain't cheap. Vettes and Mustangs have always been different market approaches. Mustang volume is huge...
Total weight is not the sole factor for performance...this car was not designed, in street trim, to be a race car. If you want to make it a race car you can take weight out of it. Balance is much more important for road performance- that means CG and fore/aft distribution. The target for me...
It was my understanding that all the design architecture for DI was included in the Coyote from the git-go...I would therefore not expect to see a big price jump. DI can yield non trivial boost in compression ratio without detonation problems. Just plan on keeping the runner side of the intake...
NSA mandated real time data stream that provides your VIN and all performance parameters of the vehicle to the nearest law enforcement agency and your insurance company.
These pics sure are a lot better than the C&D/Autoweek shots. Ford dealer here says orders accepted in April. Lots of questions remain: what's in the new Trac Pac is my bigge. Interior colors?