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Shelby Mustang stars with Ethan Hawke, Selena Gomez in Getaway movie

Car movies. We keep watching them, they keep making them. Despite Fast & Furious 6 still blowing up the box office (No. 1 in theaters for the second straight week) and production on Transformers 4 being well underway (check out the Bugatti Veyron and Corvette Stingray as new cast members), there's still room on the marquee for more car movies. Next one up is an Ethan Hawke joint called Getaway, which prominently co-stars a Ford Shelby GT500. The first trailer for Getaway, which opens in theaters on August 30, was released yesterday and can be watched below.
The movie's plot centers around Hawke's character, former race car driver Brent Magna, who must somehow use this car, what appears to be a generation-old Shelby GT500 Super Snake he "commandeered," to save his wife. The movie's third co-star is Selena Gomez, whose character we're told is the owner of said Shelby. A 20-year-old having a car like this seems a bit far-fetched - especially in Europe - and on paper, this plot looks like it cribs liberally from Charlie Sheen's 1994 The Chase. But all we've got to go on is a brief plot description and the trailer below, so we'll withhold judgment until the studio firmly has our ticket money in its grasp.
The Shelby GT500 is, of course, no stranger to acting. Before this jump to celluloid, the most fearsome of all Mustang models starred in the return of Knight Rider to television on NBC back in 2008. That gig didn't pan out for the car, the show lasting only one season and 17 episodes. In fact, with its casting in Getaway, the Shelby GT500 is one of the few actors who escaped that debacle with a future in show biz.

Toyota, Ford and Honda again top Consumer Reports Car-Brand Perception Survey

Consumer Reports has released its annual Car-Brand Perception Survey, and the list looks awfully familiar. The top six brands are identical to last year's results, with Toyota, Ford and Honda continuing to occupy the podium. All told, Toyota walked away with 133 points, putting it 15 ahead of second-place Ford. Honda jumped 26 points this year, narrowing Ford's lead to just four points in total.
Consumer Reports polls buyers from across the country on how they see multiple brands in seven categories, including quality, safety, value, performance, design/style, technology/innovation and environmentally friendly/green. Researchers then combine the findings to come up with the total brand score.
While value and performance remain important to buyers, CR found quality and safety are still on top when it comes to significance. Scion and Mitsubishi found themselves at the bottom of the pack with the worst score of all, tied at just six points. Ram, Fiat and Mini filled out the lowest five with scores of seven, eight and 10 points, respectively. You can read the full press release below for more information, or head over to the Consumer Reports site.

Even Ford executives had issues with MyFord Touch

MyFord Touch is one of the auto industry's more controversial features. The media broadly panned the infotainment system developed with Microsoft for its slow responses and reliance on voice commands to navigate its deep menus. Oh, and Ford executives weren't big fans, either. Newly revealed court documents in a California class-action lawsuit demonstrate the level of venom Ford employees, both big and small, reserved for the Blue Oval's infotainment system. An error caused Bill Ford's navigation system to crash, leaving the family scion stuck on the side of the road in an unfamiliar area. The documents, unearthed by Forbes, detail current CEO Mark Fields' aggravations with MFT, too. A mechanic emailed an image of a cracked infotainment screen on an Edge to one of Ford's top Sync engineers, Kenneth Williams, suggesting "Mark Fields may have been a little aggravated with the system." But Ford and Fields' issues are nothing compared to the woes of the engineers that had to work on MFT. In a collection of emails obtained by Forbes, one engineer called the system "a polished turd," while another simply said, "These poor customers." And after one engineer suggested using a photo of Ford's Oakville Assembly Plant – home of the Edge, Flex, Lincoln MKX, and MKT production – as a background for the system, one of his coworkers said in an email that someone should instead Photoshop the image to read "abandon hope all ye who enter here," the Detroit News reports. Another summed up the problem, saying: "Ford's quality reputation is completely on the line ... another model year with the same crap is not acceptable." MyFord Touch almost single-handedly torpedoed Ford's reputation in widely reported quality metrics, including JD Power and Consumer Reports. Ford responded with a refreshed Sync3, a wildly improved rethink of its infotainment system that is far more responsive and easier to live with every day. Related Video: News Source: Forbes, The Detroit NewsImage Credit: Ford Government/Legal Ford Lincoln Technology Mark Fields sync 3