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Chip Ganassi Racing switches to the Ford EcoBoost-powered Riley Daytona Prototype

Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates (CGRFS) announced yesterday at Ford's SEMA press conference that it will field a Ford-Riley Daytona Prototype with the 3.5-liter EcoBoost V6 in the 2014 United SportsCar Championship (USCC). CGRFS is the second team to commit to the new Ford-Riley car, behind Michael Shank Racing (which has already used the racecar to break a 26-year-old top-speed record at Daytona International Speedway).
"Over the last 10 seasons we have been able to experience a great deal of success in Grand-Am," Chip Ganassi says, "and now with the dawn of the new United SportsCar Championship we feel that Ford power will be a key ingredient to writing the next chapter of our sports car program."
In the last Grand-Am season, CGRFS raced a BMW-Riley Daytona Prototype. The team has won seven Daytona Prototype championships, all in the past ten years. Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas return as the team's prototype co-drivers, and will attend their maiden race in the Ford-Riley at the Rolex 24 at Daytona in January.

Ford partnering with MIT, Stanford on autonomous vehicle research

Ask any car engineer what's the biggest variable in achieving fuel economy targets, and he'll tell you "the driver." If one human can't understand human driving behavior enough to be certain about an innocuous number like miles per gallon, how is an autonomous car supposed to figure out what hundreds of other drivers are going to do in the course of a day? Ford has enlisted the help of Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to find out.
Starting with the automated Fusion Hybrid introduced in December, MIT will be developing algorithms that driverless cars can use to "predict actions of other vehicles and pedestrians" and objects within the three-dimensional map provided by its four LIDAR sensors.
The Stanford team will research how to extend the 'vision' of that LIDAR array beyond obstructions while driving, analogous to the way a driver uses the entire width of a lane to see what's ahead of a larger vehicle in front. Ford says it wants to "provide the vehicle with common sense" as part of its Blueprint for Mobility, preparing for an autonomous world from 2025 and beyond.

2015 Ford Mustang production to begin on July 14? Not quite, says Ford

Mustang6g.com believes that it has unlocked start date for 2015 Ford Mustang production citing a Ford dealer communiqué. According to the report, job one on the 2015 hardtop will allegedly start in just a few days, on July 14, although units that are known as "OK to Buy" won't enter production until September 9. The cars built between those dates are most likely final pre-production cars for the executive test fleet, and will likely include the cars we'll be driving at the media launch.
Sun worshippers, meanwhile, would seem to have a longer wait. Job one on the droptop supposedly isn't slated to start until September 14, with production models starting on October 27. As is the case with the hardtop, these final pre-pros are for the execs and media to test, while actual dealer orders will come from vehicles made after the October date.
After speaking to Ford, though, we wouldn't put a great deal of stock in those dates as reported. We reached out to Said Deep, Ford's North American Product Communications Manager.