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Old vs. new debate gets new life with $25,000 Fiesta ST vs. E46 M3 showdown

You know who you are. There's probably a few of you reading; the ones that say, "Why would I spend $27,000 on a new Mazda MX-5 when I could get a used Chevrolet Corvette with more power." Yes, we're talking to you, used car proponents. While it is a fair argument, it's not like used cars don't come with drawbacks of their own, though.
In an attempt to put this new-versus-used argument to bed once and for all, Matt Farah of the The Smoking Tire has picked up a pair of $25,000 cars - a used, but lightly modified, 2003 BMW M3 and a 2013 Ford Fiesta ST. Naturally, there's a comparison.
Farah, as he's wont to do, does get into the nitty gritty of what each car is like to drive, and discusses the merits of used and new-car shopping. But as he rightly points out while testing the M3, "So, it is a good car. But like any used car, it really does depend on the individual car."

Ford's Explorer-based Police Interceptor to get 365-hp EcoBoost option

Speeders beware, the police are going to be getting quite a bit faster. Ford has just announced that it will be offering its 3.5-liter, twin-turbocharged, EcoBoost V6 in the Explorer Police Interceptor. The new engine will be joining the existing 3.7-liter V6. The 365-horsepower, 350-pound-foot mill should be familiar to consumers as the powerplant that's found in the Ford Taurus SHO (and its LEO equivalent, the Taurus Police Interceptor) and the Ford Explorer Sport. It should also provide quite a kick in the pants to officers used to the naturally aspirated 3.7 and its 304 ponies and 279 pound-feet of torque.
The move to the more potent powerplant was born out of all the equipment officers need to carry on a day-to-day basis. These days, there's so much stuff that police need on a regular basis, that there's a genuine market for a faster Police Interceptor Utility, as it's known officially. The Explorer-based cruiser has already accounted for 68 percent of Ford's LEO sales in 2013, and that's with just the 3.7, and we'd only expect that number to increase once the twin-turbo, 3.5-liter V6 is available. Ford won't offer up any indication of what the take rate will be on the new engine, but we're guessing it'll be fairly high.
The success of the Explorer PI couldn't have come at a better time for Ford. The decision to end Crown Victoria production was not a popular one with police, and combined with Chevrolet and Dodge diving into the LEO market feet first, Ford hasn't been performing as well as it's wanted to. The Explorer has been helping it turn around, though. And with the inclusion of the EcoBoost, Ford also has a legit competitor for the Chevrolet Tahoe on the big utility side of the police market.

How Ford hid the 2015 Mustang from spy photographers

Now that we've finally seen the 2015 Ford Mustang, it's fun to go back and look at the spy shots we spent months pouring over, trying to dissect what was under all the camouflage. For the most part, Ford did a good job of concealing the car from spy photographers, and it released a video showing how much work went into doing so.
As crude as the Mustang's camo looked, all of the hard plastic, foam, vinyl and ratchet straps were actually created and put in place by a specific design team. The whole idea was to hide the car's identity, but it certainly ended up acting as a magnet for attention, too. According to Ford's press release, it took less than an hour for spy shots to appear online after the car was taken on public roads for the very first time - this is likely in reference to our first official spy shots of the Mustang from June, shown in the gallery below.
Scroll down for a press release and video, which shows footage of the 2015 Ford Mustang testing with minimal camouflage. This is probably the same track session where we got our first look at the Mustang's face back in August.