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Ford Focus ST, Fiesta ST buyers to get free Octane Academy driving school

The Ford Focus ST and Fiesta ST have created plenty of excitement in the sport compact segment, and Ford is looking to make sure that owners are driving and enjoying their cars to the best of their abilities. As an added bonus for buying one of these sporty hatchbacks, Ford will provide a complimentary ST Octane Academy session to be held at the Miller Motorsports Park in Utah.
Attendees will be responsible for travel and lodging, but Ford will provide the driving school free of charge. Included in this two-day trip, ST owners will get class instruction and driving instruction in prepped Focus ST and Fiesta ST models on the track and autocross course. Some karting action will also be involved as will a tour of Ken Block's Hoonigan Racing headquarters located nearby. If this doesn't sound like enough fun, there is also an optional day of activities that includes some more track time in a Mustang GT and off-road instruction in an F-150 SVT Raptor.
Ford told us that those who have already purchased a Focus ST or Fiesta ST will still be able to attend the performance driving school, but the press release, which is posted below, makes it sound like it applies to original owners only. Ford has yet to announce its schedule for the ST Octane Academy or prices for additional activities or guests.

Oprah at it again, gives car away on Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Oprah Winfrey loves giving away cars. Not only has she given Pontiac G6 sedans and Volkswagen Beetle retro-mobiles to everyone in the audience of her past show, but the other night on Jimmy Kimmel Live! she gave another car away to one lucky audience member, while yelling her now-famous line: "You get a car!"
Although the acting of Oprah and Jimmy Kimmel was obviously staged for this giveaway, the reaction from the woman in the audience was genuine shock as she found out that she had just won a new Ford Fusion Energi. Congrats!
Not to take away from what Oprah and Jimmy pulled off, but our cynical sides have to wonder if there isn't more than just a little coincidence that this giveaway took place on the same day that Ford announced a fuel economy reduction for the C-Max hybrid. You be the judge... Scroll down to watch the short clip from the episode.

Ford opens research center in Silicon Valley

These days, the software running a vehicle's myriad of electronic systems seems to be getting nearly as much development focus from automakers as the traditional mechanical parts that keep a car going. Constantly improving that technology requires a lot of experimentation, though, and Ford is expanding its presence in Silicon Valley with the just-opened Research and Innovation Center Palo Alto to make that progress possible. Ford opened its first office in the country's technological hub in 2012 to draw talent and devise ways to deal with vast amounts of sensor data. Apparently, setting up shop in Silicon Valley was deemed a success because the Blue Oval decided to create this new lab in the Stanford Research Park to focus on five areas: connectivity, mobility, autonomous vehicles, customer experience and analytics. Among the center's potential projects, Ford is hoping to develop better natural speech recognition, which is absolutely vital for improving infotainment systems. Assuming the tech eventually works well enough, your voice might even be used to adjust a vehicle's power seats, according to the automaker. The Blue Oval is also letting engineers from Stanford University test autonomous driving algorithms on a self-driving version of the Fusion. In a smaller stakes venture, researchers are working to get a Nest smart thermometer to automatically adjust the temperature at home depending on if an owner's vehicle is leaving or coming back. To really show that its serious about these ventures, Ford hired Dragos Maciuca away from Apple as the center's technical leader. The automaker also wants to have 125 researchers at work there by the end of the year.