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Man chases down truck thief and steams it all on Facebook

A Washington man chased down a truck stolen from his family's dealership last Saturday and livestreamed the event on Facebook. According to KOMO, a 2005 Ford F-250 was stolen from Sunrise Auto Sales in Eatonville, Washington on the morning of October 8. Aaron Babcock, who co-owns the small dealership with his father David, told reporters that after reviewing surveillance footage, he later spotted the truck while riding his motorcycle on Webster Road East. "I watched my cameras and found the video of a man lurking around and ending up taking off with my truck," Babcock told KOMO. "Cops came and made a case. Three hours later I was on my motorcycle in Graham, and they drove by me oncoming. It still had dealer stickers on it. It said diesel on the window and it had our dealer plate on it. It stuck out like a sore thumb. It was really easy to see." Once he spotted the stolen Super Duty, he wheeled his bike around and gave chase. He attempted to call 911, but was unsure if the dispatcher heard him due to noise from the wind and the bike's engine. So he fired up Facebook live and started streaming his chase, giving running commentary and updating his location as he chased the slow-moving truck. "I wasn't going to let him get away. I was going to try follow him down. I had no idea what to do," Babcock said. "Nobody could hear me on the phone so I just figured the first thing to do is pull up Facebook live." Babcock's Facebook friends pitched in by calling 911 to report the chase and even jumping in their own cars to follow the truck. At one point, he pulled alongside the truck and recognized both men in the cab. The driver was the man seen lurking around the dealer lot in the surveillance video, and the passenger was an old friend of Babcock's. "I know who you are!" he shouted at them, but the hunkered down and kept driving. Eventually, Babcock lost cell phone signal and the livestream ended. Eatonville police, who by this point were well aware of the incident, caught up with the truck in the 8400 block of 356th Street South in Eatonville. The driver was arrested and the passenger was questioned and released. Both denied stealing the vehicle or knowing it was stolen. Two sets of keys from Sunrise Auto Sales and a stolen credit card were also recovered from the truck. Related Video

Ford Focus ST checks into Jay Leno's Garage

In a change of pace from the high-end vehicles that often appear in Jay Leno's Garage, Ford sends its hottest hatchback (in the US, at least), the 252-horsepower Focus ST, to be featured on Leno's show. Accompanying the five-door hatch is its chief engineer, Jamal Hameedi.
Riding on stylish 18-inch wheels with summer tires and with a spoiler that doubles as a lunch tray, Hameedi and Leno walk us through the finer points of what makes the ST special, which also includes bigger brakes, torque vectoring, a manual transmission and, of course, 252 hp and 270 pound-feet of torque from the 2.0-liter EcoBoost four-cylinder engine, which is made possible by 21 psi of turbocharged boost.
Watch the video below to see what Leno thinks of the global Focus ST.

Ford Focus Electric gets $6,000 price drop, now starts at $29,995

In early 2013, the Nissan Leaf shed a massive $6,500 from its $35,200 base price to offer a new starting price of $28,800. Since then, we have seen numerous other plug-in vehicles get smaller price tags, from the Honda Fit EV (lower lease price) to the Chevrolet Volt (around $5,000 lower) to the Mitsubishi i (a $6,130 drop). Last year, Ford lowered the $39,200 price of the Focus Electric by around $4,000, but that hasn't been enough to get the Ford EV to really compete, saleswise, with other plug-in vehicles on the market. But wait, as they say, there's more. This past weekend, Ford lopped another $6,000 from the price of both the 2014 model year Focus EVs currently on dealer lots as well as the redesigned 2015 models that are now rolling out (they're basically the same car, minus some appearance changes). Ford spokesman Aaron Miller confirmed to AutoblogGreen that the Focus EV will now start at $29,995 and said that reducing the price should make the Blue Oval's only pure EV competitive. "We hope by reducing the price we're giving consumers another reason to consider it," he said. Through the end of September 2014, Ford has sold just 1,534 Focus EVs in the US (the model sold 1,335 in the first nine months of 2013). For comparison's sake, the Nissan Leaf starts at $29,010 and sells around 3,000 units a month in the US. Miller notes that the Focus EV has been selling the best on the West Coast, and is also doing well on the East Coast. After that, he said Atlanta and the Great Lakes area also see decent sales of model's admittedly small pie. We can only assume that offering the EV for under $30,000 will make that pie somewhat bigger.