Aussie Motoring

We caught this beautiful looking specimen parked in the street here in Hervey Bay early yesterday morning.

About all I can tell you is that it’s definitely a Ford and I may have more details for you later in the week.

I can now tell you that it’s a 1932 Ford Coupe and you will often see it around the various car shows on the Fraser Coast.

Ford in America is set to release what they describe as a “super fueld economy” version of the popular F-150 truck that will increase fuel economy by 8% when they release the 2009 model in October … but don’t get too excited.

The new F-150 will only return about 15 miles to the gallon around town. For us down here in Australia that’s about 15.68 litres per 100km and that’s economy?

Yes, you did read that correctly … we are talking about selling Volvo the company and not just a Volvo.

For some time now Ford has owned Volvo as part of the Premier Automotive Group that also included Aston Martin, Jaguar and Land Rover but all it has left now is Volvo and Ford needs the cash.

So who might buy Volvo? Renault and Ford have been talking for a while but can’t agree on a price and now Ford is also talking to Dongfeng … China’s third largest car manufacturer.

Jaguar made by Tata and now Volvo made in China … what is the world coming to?

Well at the moment they’re all owned by Ford … but Ford would like to sell them … if they can find a buyer.

On paper Volvo is probably the marque that’s got the most appeal to prospective purchasers but the reality is that Volvo isn’t doing quite so well as it appears to be on paper.

And who would want to buy Land Rover and Jaguar? There are the usual bunch of private equity groups trying to grab both companies but there are also two possible contenders that come as a bit of a surprise. Industry experts suggest that two Indian car manufacturer are very interested in buying both Land Rover and Jaguar.

The two companies are Tata motors and the Mahindra group. Both are major players in the booming Indian market and both have tried to break into the Australian market … without much success..

Mahindra is a major manufacturer of low-cost motor vehicles including a 2WD and 4WD utility similar to a Toyota Hilux. The ute was to be exhibited at the Orange National Field Days last year and Tynan Motors had been appointed as the importer and distributor.

The plan was for the first shipment of Mahindra utes to hit the showrooms around the middle of this year but that doesn’t seem to have happened and Mahindra is not listed on the Tynan Motors website.

Tata Motors is also a major player in the Indian automotive scene. They produce a wide range of vehicles for the private and commercial sectors. Tata Motors first tested the Australian market four years ago and could be back in the Australian market later this year but experts are not hopeful of Tata having any more success than they did four years ago.

You can read more about Tata, Mahindra and the Australian market here

But will either company be able to make turn around the fortunes of Land Rover and Jaguar? Overseas experts describe both Ford subsidiaries as ‘basket cases’ so it will be interesting to see what lies ahead.

Today’s Brisbane Courier Mail is reporting that the chief executive of Ford in the United States had talks last week with the chairman of Toyota with a view to forming some sort of ‘partnership’

It seems that Ford wants some help in reducing production costs.

Now why would Toyota want to align itself with a lame duck like Ford?

And if it does what will General Motors go looking for a similar arrangement?

You can read more about the story here

Why do two people need four cupholders?

As somebody who works full time on the Internet I often lament at how many designers of web pages and the scripts that produce web pages simply seem to have no clue as to useability. They seem to ignore the KISS principle entirely and produce sites that look terrible and are definitely not user-friendly.

And now I see that some concept is creeping into car design too. Take the current US Ford Explorer for example. The interior designers of that vehicle have incorporated 4 cup holders into the front of the vehicle. There are the normal two in the centre console and then there seems to be one in each front door.

You might think that’s something you could live with but that extra cupholder makes life very difficult for the driver because it presses against their left leg and finding a comfortable way to sit is almost impossible.

Can something as relatively minor as a cupholder affect sales? It seems that it can with some anecdotal evidence from Ford dealers in the US that indicates people have been turned off buying the car by the discomfort caused by the cupholder in the door.

But an over-abundance of cupholders is not the only problem in the Ford Explorer. Just look at the picture and notice where the hand hold most people use to close the door is located. That’s it, tucked under the panel that controls the power windows. Reaching it and using it is said to be quite a challenge.

You can read more about the design faults here

This year Ford America is looking down the barrel of a $US12 billion loss as Ford cars continuen to be shunned by the American motorists.

The only solution Ford sees to their financial woes is to offer redundancies to all of its 75,000 workers and hope that somewhere between 20,000 and 25,000 take up the offer. Along with the redundancies Ford hopes to close 14 plants.

The cost to the company? Possibly $US140,000 for every worker who accepts the company’s offer.

Are you one of those really advanced techno-geek revheads that would love to be able to intergrate your iPod into the dash of your car? Well you’re not alone, it seems that there are many people around the world who would love to be able to do that and dispense with the current non-tech plug-in-cigarette lighter solution.

Ford, GM and Mazda are all working with Apple on ways to intergrate the iPod into their vehicles’ audio systems. Initially Ford is looking at simply plugging the iPod into the face plate of the radio but further down the track there will be an interface in the glove box that will allow the iPod to be operated from the audio controls on the dash.

GM will be starting with a similar system to Ford and once again it will require the iPod to be placed in the glove box.

Mazda is not saying much at all except to say that it will offering an iPod interface on all its vehicles worldwide.At the moment Ford and GM are only looking at offering the interface on US vehicles from the 2007 model onwards.

Somehow shoving the iPod in the glove box seems like a rather clumsy way of doing things to me - surely there’s a more elegant and geeky alternative they could have used.

Who am I kidding, I don’t even own an iPod or any other sort of MP3 player and even the TivX controls leave me confused

You can read the full story here

Ford in the US has announced plans to reduce their focus on producing hybrid technology motor vehicles (the Toyota Prius is a hybrid) and turn their attention to building vehicles powered by biofuels.

Around September last year Ford committed itself to building the production capacity required to roll 250,000 off the production line by the end of 2010 but now Ford has changed its mind.

Instead Ford now wants to look at a broad range of alternatives including clean diesels, biodiesels, E85 (the ethanol/diesel mix that is available in the US) and more advanced engine technology.

Ford does offer two hybrids in the US - the Escape Hybrid and the Mercury Mariner Hybrid (as seen here). Both these vehicles fall into the SUV market but neither model is a big seller.

… then the news from Ford America must look good.

The word is that sometime this decade Ford will release a 4.4 litre V8 diesel for it’s F-150.

The Auto Blog is reporting that the new engine is currently in the development and planning stage. You can read more about it here