SoonerLS

I know a bit about old mills--I have a thing for Flathead Fords--and I'm not sure I would know how to drive a Tin Lizzy. I know you control the spark advance via a lever on the steering column, but where it needs to be set under what conditions is something else entirely. I wonder how many people would know how to start my tractor (a '48 Ford 8N), or any carb'd vehicle, for that matter...

You know how I know that's a bad idea? Because Chevy has already done that to the Camaro. Personally, I don't want to be stuck on the side of the road after some piece of road trash split the sidewall because some genius engineer decided to save a few pounds by eliminating the spare tire. These damned donut spares are bad enough, but at least they'll get me down the road in a pinch...

Hey, that's completely unfair. Now, go apologize to all the Goobers, Morons, and Idiots out there.

That's basically what's happened with 'loomnum. The big example was the AL-intensive Jag XJ redesign of a few years ago, when they went with aluminum pretty much everywhere they could (IIRC, even the unibody structure was 'loomnum), and the car still ended up being ~400lbs heavier than the model it replaced.

The Evos doesn't really look like a Mustang, but one of the first pictures I saw of it (from low in the front, maybe) evoked it very strongly--when I first saw it, I thought, "that's a Mustang." It was subtly obvious, IMHO.

Apples and oranges. In 2006, the Mustang was the only car in that market, but now the Camaro and Challenger are both in that arena, and the Camaro, at least, is selling quite well. It also doesn't help that the over-all market tanked in 2008, and the 7-MY-old Mustang is competing with much newer designs.

What, they don't put parking brakes on BMWs? :shades:

All men are CREATED equal; what we do with it after that is up to us. And Ford is not getting special treatment. They're taking advantage of the rules of the game, to be sure, but that doesn't preclude you from doing the same if you had the wherewithal to do it--and that is equal treatment under the law.

Actually, it is the epitome of trickle-down. It all started with Henry Ford investing into his company and his employees; you don't get any more "trickle down" than that. As for the hullabaloo about Mulally taking chartered flights instead of flying business class, that's a load of horsefeathers--if he's on a commercial flight, he is essentially incommunicado for the duration, whereas he can still be working on Ford business on a chartered flight. He certainly can't be dealing with confidential Ford issues on a commercial flight; that really is a security risk.

Great minds think alike--I was searching while you were posting this. B)

The difference is that the Taurus name wasn't out of production when Mulally took over--all he had to do was stop a bad decision. The Conti name had been out of production for a few years, plus the MK-series names were part of a concerted plan (so I was told at the time) to emphasize the Lincoln brand over the model names--that's also why the Zephyr was renamed. I think the Town Car was too far gone into the fleet market for them to bother renaming it, but I don't know why the Navigator still hasn't been changed. I'd bet Ford has maintained their trademarks on the Continental name. This ain't their first rodeo. Edit: It looks like Ford has at least three active trademarks on the Continental name--in fact, Bentley's application for a trademark on Continental Flying Spur was denied on the basis that it could be "confusing" relative to those three Ford trademarks.

There are still people who lust after the Contis of the '60s (including me), but that's ancient history. As RJ noted, the Conti has been out of production for a decade--if the MKZ didn't have as much recognition, it'd be a dismal failure on the part of the PR/Marketing folks in Dearborn.

The Taurus X was produced up 'til last year.

Personally, I think the Freestyle looked quite a bit better than the Five Hundred, but that was mostly because the Five Hundred was so Toyotally bland--at least the Freestyle had some character. (Call the Freestyle what you want, but to me it's clearly a station wagon.)

No--the Mustang does not compete for the same market as the CUVs. The people who would buy wagons are already buying CUVs or minivans, so there's no incentive for Ford to invest in building wagons.

Yes, that would be the "wud" trim referenced above.

1st Gen ('00-'02) LSes have "wud" trim, but the 2nd Gens ('03-'06) have real American Walnut Burl trim. The finish they used to protect the veneer made it look fake to some people, but it is real wood.

I think the wagons might have a chance, but minivans, SUVs, and CUVs have effectively shrunk that market segment. Just like GM poisoned the well for diesels in cars, the abysmal hatches of the '70s and early '80s are still too fresh in the memories of too many new car buyers...well, at least of those who don't want swimming pools in their spare tire wells...

To be fair, I don't remember if I have it set to 720p or 1080i, but projectors are wonderful things.

I didn't at first, but it does look rather like a surprised ET if you look at it right. I'd tell you how to see it, but what has been seen cannot be unseen...

The first ad in the series aired during tonight's episode of Fringe. I started watching about 20 minutes late (yay, DVRs), so I was skipping commercials, but I backed up and watched the whole ad when I got to this one. I thought it looked pretty good in 1080 on an 8' screen...

You got it. In Ford's home market, the number of cams is referenced against the head, so DOHC engines like the Coyote 5.0 have two cams per head, (usually) one intake and one exhaust. iVCT engines only have VCT on the Intake cam; TiVCT engines have VCT on both Intake and Exhaust cams.

No, but if they called it a Focus Cobra, they just might. SVT is an engineering operation within Ford, not not a model, so their name was applied to every model they touched, not just one particular variant of a model line. Their name is hardly analogous to the SHO name, which came from the SHO mill that was only used in the Taurus SHO. And if you talk to SHO enthusiasts, whether thy say S-H-O or SHO(w), they almost always reference SHO, and rarely reference the Taurus part of the name.

The SHO name doesn't belong in that list; it has only been used on one car (the Taurus SHO), and it was a perfectly descriptive name when it was introduced--at the time, 220hp from a NA V6 was unheard of in a supercar, let alone a grocery getter, so it really was "Super High Output."

Titanium really doesn't say anything about the powerplant, and an SHO is a Taurus, period. It'd be like having an F150 Cobra--it wouldn't really bring anyone in the door, and it would piss off the SHO loyalists. Sport may not be the best moniker, but at least it hints at the intent behind the vehicle without misappropriating a name. FWIW, I like my '99 Explorer Sport...