4x4 Supercre 5.4l Leather (2) Instrument Panel Cupholders (2) Rear Cupholders on 2040-cars

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Ford looks to space robots to improve car-to-car communications [w/video]

Ford has partnered with St. Petersburg Polytechnic University for three years to research various kinds of connected vehicle communications. The university tie-up is part of its study of space robots, NASA systems created to enable space-to-Earth communication, and the university's own development of systems that enable communication between the International Space State and Earth.
The objective is for Ford to engineer layers of robust networks and redundancy systems that will allow your car to speak to other cars, to emergency vehicles, to infrastructure like traffic lights and buildings, and to the cloud. Benefits would come in just about every area of transit, from avoiding accidents, to getting medical workers to an accident more quickly, to improving the flow of traffic during rush hour.
Check out the press release below for details on what Ford wants to learn from the JUSTIN Humanoid and NASA Robonaut R2, and a video of technical leader Oleg Gusikhin discussing his interest in the project.

2016 Ford F-150 Limited 4x4 to start at nearly $62,000

The starting price of the top-of-the-line Ford F-150 has crested the $60,000 mark. This was, to be entirely honest, a long time coming, as consumers have shown a willingness to gobble up increasingly lavish pickups over the past five to ten years. According to Cars Direct, the four-wheel-drive-equipped 2016 F-150 Limited rings up at $61,905, or just $15 less than Ford's previous range-topping luxury model, the Lincoln Navigator. Of course, you can get a cheaper Limited if you really needed to. Opting for just rear-wheel drive will lower the price to $58,480. Not only do these figures eclipse the price of any other F-150 before them, they easily exceed the starting figures of competitive luxury pickups. The previous top-of-the-line, F-150 starts at just $52,780, while the two-wheel-drive competitors from GMC, Chevrolet, and Ram – the Sierra Denali, Silveardo High Country, and 1500 Limited – start at $51,210, $49,810, and $51,870, respectively. The new F-150 model adds plenty of bling – there's "LIMITED" lettering on the hood and big, bold, 22-inch wheels – along with power running boards, a panoramic roof, heated/cooled/massaging Mojave leather seats, blind-spot monitoring, and a 360-degree camera. Related Video:

Junkyard Gem: 1993 Mercury Topaz GS Sedan

As long as the Mercury brand existed — a period spanning the 1939 through 2011 model years — nearly every Mercury sold in the United States was more or less a redecorated Ford model. The Torino had its Montego sibling, the Crown Victoria had the Grand Marquis, the Cougar was based on everything from the Mustang to the Mondeo, and so on. Naturally, when the folks in Dearborn developed the Ford Tempo compact, a Mercury version had to be created. This was the Topaz, with the official launch of both cars taking place on the deck of the aircraft carrier often referred to as the USS Decrepit. You can't make this stuff up! The Tempo/Topaz, also known as the Tempaz, has largely faded from our collective automotive memory by now, since it broke no significant new engineering or styling ground (this story would be much different if Ford had only put the amazing straight-eight "T-Drive" Tempaz powertrain into production) and didn't have any endearing features other than being a cheap domestic competitor to the Toyota Corolla and Nissan Sentra. Still, close to 3 million Tempazes left North American Ford and Lincoln-Mercury showrooms during the 1984-1994 period. As you'd expect, most of these disposable cars disappeared from both the street and the car graveyard long ago. It takes a very special Tempaz for me to break out my camera while I'm patrolling my local wrecking yards; generally, this means an ultra-rare all-wheel-drive version or at least a very early model in super-clean condition. Today's Junkyard Gem is neither, but I took one look at this spectacular Bordello Red crypto-velour-and-slippery-plastic interior and recognized that this was no ordinary junkyard Mercury. It appears that Mercury had dropped the idea of clever names for base-grade seat fabrics by the time of the Topaz, referring to this stuff as just "cloth" in all the brochures I could find. That's too bad, because Mercurys had cool names for upholstery (e.g., Chromatex) in the old days. The interior is in very good condition but the steering wheel shows substantial wear, so I think this is a high-mile Topaz that got meticulous care from its owner or owners. Ford used five-digit odometers on these cars until the end of production, however, so we'll never know if this reading indicates 65,404 miles or 365,404 miles. The body is very straight, but there's some nasty corrosion behind the right front wheelwell.