2005 Ford Excursion on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Automakers donating money, vehicles and supplies to Oklahoma tornado relief effort

Judging by the destruction the Oklahoma City area experienced earlier this week, residents are going to need a lot of help in coming months. Fortunately, a number of automakers - including General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Volkswagen, Honda and Toyota - have stepped up to donate money, supplies and vehicles to aid in the recovery and rebuilding processes.
Here's a quick rundown of which automakers have pitched in and what each contributed so far:
Ford Motor Company has donating $250,000 and a Transit Connect to the American Red Cross, and it will match all other donations made to the Red Cross (up to $250,000) using a special URL tied to the latter's website (link here). Additionally, its local Oklahoma dealers have thrown in an extra $150,000 for the United Way and the automaker will be offering an extra $500 toward the purchase of a new Ford vehicle.

Porsche 911 Turbo and Nissan GT-R Nismo star in World's Greatest Drag Race 4

We love Motor Trend's annual World's Greatest Drag Race video. Now back for its fourth appearance, the idea of lining some of the world's fastest cars up for a ten-wide, straight-line, full-throttle run is, well... it's pretty freaking badass.
The lineup this year boasts some impressively fast cars to be sure. The group of ten includes the following darlings: Alfa Romeo 4C, BMW i8, BMW M4, Chevrolet Camaro Z/28, Ford Fiesta ST, Jaguar F-Type R Coupe, Nissan GT-R Nismo, Porsche 911 Turbo S, Subaru WRX STI and, last but not least, the Volkswagen GTI. Give us any one of those for the weekend, and we're happy to take the keys.
It must be said though, that for a publication that draws as much water as Motor Trend does, there are some big cars that we might expect to be here instead. The Lamborghini Huracán or Ferrari 458 Speciale would have added some exotic flare to the list, and the omissions of the Chevy Corvette Stingray (for the second year in a row) and the Dodge Challenger Hellcat are real head-scratchers.

New Ford dedicated hybrid due in 2018, will it fare better than C-Max?

Everyone likes to go after the champ. When it comes to fuel economy, that means taking on the Prius, which is something that automakers not named Toyota have been trying to do for years. Just because no one has been able to beat the Prius for fuel economy numbers isn't stopping them from trying. Hyundai was just caught with a potential Prius-fighter and now we have news that Ford is joining the party. Well, is going to join again. The last time Ford said it was going to challenge the Prius, it didn't go quite as planned. The C-Max hybrid was heavily hyped as a Prius-beater and was originally rated at 47 miles per gallon. Of course, it later needed to be recalculated to just 40 mpg and sales tanked. So, it's back to the Blue Oval drawing board, according to Automotive News, which is reporting that Ford is readying a brand new gas-electric hybrid due in 2018 as a 2019 model year vehicle. A plug-in version is in the works, too, and the car will reportedly share a platform with the upcoming next-gen Focus and Escape models. About those C-Max sales. They have not been stellar for the C-Max hybrid, which started strong but suffered when the reality of the lower fuel economy was realized. So far in 2014 (through the end of July), Ford has sold 11,685 gas-electric models and another 4,759 plug-in Energi versions. The trend for the standard C-Max is downward (from 20,125 during the same time frame in 2013) and upward for the plug-in version (2,915 in the first seven months of 2013).