*mint* 1956 Ford Fairlane Sunliner Convertable Coupe With Continental Kit on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Ford pulls official support from top-level NHRA teams

As the smallest team in the sport, it wasn't really a surprise when Dodge decided to pull out of NASCAR, but Autoweek is reporting that Ford is looking to pull the plug on its professional-level NHRA sponsorships following the 2014 season. With attendance and television ratings down, the article reports that Ford is just backing out of the top series but will remain active in the Sportsman classes of racing, which are geared more toward the grassroots and semi-professional racers.
This means that one of drag racing's biggest names, John Force, will be left looking for new sponsorship after next season. Force, 64, has been with Ford for 17 years, winning 15 championships in that time and winning almost half of all Funny Car events in his Mustang since he started working with Ford in 1997, but after 2014, there could be some big shakeups at John Force Racing.
According to the report, Force would consider is moving over to the Top Fuel dragster series, although he could also move to another manufacturer to remain in the Funny Car series. With Ford on the way out, this leaves just Toyota and Dodge as the remaining active automakers in the highest levels of drag racing.

Ford UK exec says EVs are a good way to lose a fortune

Stateside, Ford execs are quick to point out the automaker's expansion in the plug-in sector. And despite a minimal presence in the pure EV space, the Blue Oval has been promoting its plug-in vehicles as part of an overall effort to boost fleetwide fuel economy. Too bad the company's UK chief didn't get the memo. There's "no point in us getting behind [EVs] and losing a fortune" - Ford's Mark Ovenden Mark Ovenden, speaking rather frankly at the Geneva Motor Show recently, said he didn't have real high hopes for substantial electric-vehicle adoption and said the company's money was better spent on smaller gas- and diesel-powered engines, the UK's Daily Mail says. Ovenden said of EV development that there was "no point in us getting behind it and losing a fortune," adding that his goal was to have variants of Ford's EcoBoost engine in 40 percent of the company's vehicles. Ford has about a 15-percent market share in the UK. The UK doesn't appear to be as kind to the EV as the US. Nissan last year cut the price of its all-electric Leaf there last year by about $4,000, while the company rolled out a promotion for the Leaf late last year, including allowing Leaf drivers to borrow a gas- or diesel-powered Nissan for free for as long as two weeks a year during the first three years of Leaf ownership. In the US, Ford sold just 229 Ford Focus Electrics during the first two months of the year after moving 1,738 units in 2013.

Lincoln MKC will be renamed the Corsair in 2021, probably

Lincoln will be renaming its MKC crossover, calling it the Corsair instead. Automotive News is reporting that the recently trademarked, yet storied Ford model name Corsair will be affixed on the 2021 model year crossover. The report says Ford has already told its U.S. dealers about the name at an Orlando meeting last month. Ford has a long history with the Corsair nameplate in the States and abroad: Most recently, it has been in use in Australia in the early 1990s, in the UK in the 1960s, and before that Ford offered an Edsel Corsair in the late 1950s. Even if an Edsel connection might not be the best possible thing for a Ford product, let alone a Lincoln, it might serve the crossover well as Ford moves to ditch the MK naming convention it's used for Lincoln for the past decade. Still, the manufacturer is said to have cautioned dealers it might opt out of using the Corsair name before production time. At the same meeting, Ford reportedly showed the next-generation Escape, the Explorer, a battery electric crossover dubbed the Mach 1, a yet-unnamed small SUV (which might be the Bronco) , and a new Lincoln Continental complete with suicide doors. The MKC will still receive a refresh for next year, retaining its letters-name for a couple of years before the bigger redesign for 2021. Currently, the MKC is the strongest-selling Lincoln product in China, and it brings in numerous new Lincoln customers there. In the U.S. it's outsold by the MKX crossover and is neck-and-neck with the MKZ sedan.