Links:

Miss MotorMouth First Video on the 2011 Ford Fiesta

Consumer Reports Senior Driver article with resources

Live from the Ford Fiesta press event last night on my MingleMediaTV Live Cast, my guest and event co-driver, Jack B. did our best to not break the Fiesta embargo on drive impressions and still share our unique Fiesta quality experience, discuss the tech apps we hadn’t seen yet (more on that next week because they weren’t what we thought) and, best of all, you get a bunch of fun road time with us. Next week is a drive impression video from us with a whole lot of impression from me live because I will be free to say more.

(Be patient! We did the show live from a hotel room with the WORST broadband ever and after coming straight off a long drive, had very odd lighting. It is the banter that counts, right?)

First we introduce you to the Fiesta, our current thoughts on SYNC and Jack’s fortunately cut off lesson on how to talk like a gangsta. Second part is a video we did of our first drive and comments on quality, price and more schnizzle. (Shut. Up. I am pre-Jack Baruth School of Gangsta.) Stay tuned through all of the baloney because we talk pricing about the Fit, the Yaris and the Fiesta.

This week I will get to be part of the press that drives the first US edition Fiesta as it will be sold and I am excited. I loved the European edition because it was tight like my Z3 Coupe, was comfortable and even roomy enough to fit Jeff Glucker from Hoonieverse in the back seat of Fiesta Agent Jonathan’s Fiesta on a mini road trip to Los Angeles to see Born in Baja: Making of the the Raptor-R film premiere. (Jeff is not a small man, ladies. He is married. I just know how much beer he can consume.) The film was not R-rated and it showed on SpeedTV. R means RAWR, in this case.

It will be interesting to try the new Sync in the Fiesta with my BlackBerry (Twitter by voice is like MacSpeech with extra sauce, hold the iPhone), experience the automatic dual clutch (I hear it is slushy), see if the corporate Ford vents from Europe stayed in this version because they rocked and if they covered the back of the flip-down back seat with carpet or if I would scratch a Craigslist free conquest on bare metal like I would in the Euro edition.

During my coy introduction to the US Fiesta, I will be in San Francisco with real journalists and will be doing my MingleMediaTV show live with a special guest! Jack Baruth from SpeedSportLive will be joining me as a virgin Fiesta driver. Okay, he will have driven it that afternoon for the first time so he will have one more notch on his belt. Should be a fun discussion! Join us at 9PM EST at for the MissMotorMouth on MingleMediaTV Show!

Without further adieu, I present you with the MissMotorMouth Empire Fiesta Movement video application. (Laugh all you want. I had fun making it.)

Things are not always what they seem. For instance, you might think this episode is nearly a week late. Wrong as usual, idiot. We were planning to do this episode a year from now, so technically it’s early. Why are you so offended? Clearly you are unfamiliar with the word “idiot’s” Greek roots. I was simply suggesting you were a private person unfamiliar with the vagaries of podcasting. Again, not what it seems.

So there you go. Houston, we have a theme. This week we’ve got the coolest 4×4 you never expected, a bevy of protests as the Detroit Auto Show gets going and a wrecked Yaris that is more functional than you’d think. Plus we’ve got some new fun and games this week including our Mystery Words of the Week, a new segment where we get to stereotype drivers and a couple of burnouts gone terribly wrong.

Download MP3 | | |

My parents had a 1967 yellow Mustang that I drove quite a lot! It carried Heidi, the 1984 Goddard High School Homecoming Queen, on the back in the parade down Main Street in my hometown of Roswell, NM (she may have looked like a California Princess but it was my car). I was also allowed to take it out of town with 2 friends my senior year for an uneventful weekend at Mustang Island in Texas (a gift from my mother when she felt sorry for me because I missed my Senior Spring Break when I had mono).

I remember when my parents found that car. We were driving from Roswell to Horseshoe Bay, Texas and while driving through Brady, Texas (the disputed “Heart of Texas if you ask my friend KIRK) and there it sat: all restored in a showroom window of a vintage brick car lot. This was the early ’80′s. I think my parents were making more money than they ever had in their whole life, deservably so. We’d had some pretty cool cars previously, mind you! But never an old one and never a convertible. There are funny things that I miss about the Mustang: the little pedal I could push with my left foot to make the windshield wipers pass when I drove through sprinklers, the air vent down in the floorboard where fresh air could come in while the top was up and listening to only AM radio music stations.

Oh! the 1980′s! My friend Ruby flipped her Fastback one day with other friends in the car while skipping school to smoke. My dad’s brother Raymond, one of my heroes, bought his own red convertible vintage Mustang which he proudly kept garaged until he died earlier this year. As my cousin Shawn said, “unless something changes some minds, dad’s will be joining my two ’65 hardtops after we get things sorted out.”

The 1980′s also saw an era of new Mustangs that honestly, were so ugly to me and I blocked them so much that I didn’t even acknowledge their presence. That trend continued until 1994 but by that point, I guess, I became a non-believer and it wasn’t even a viable car to consider wasting time thinking about.

In 2005 that all changed. The Mustang made a comeback and Ford had obviously had a re-think: pretty is as pretty does. When someone I know was looking for a new car I persuaded him to buy an ’05 coupe (I still love his car & he doesn’t love it as much because he can’t carry his band’s equipment in it so well).

Last night, despite the current pre-shock economic trembles affecting the manufacturer, Ford revealed the latest Mustang. The 2010 version still has that look and performance that made me fall in love again but this time the object of my affection has been in the gym, eating right and is ready for a new era of fans.

Is it the wrong time to introduce this car? I don’t think so because we can’t force muscle car lovers into hybrids or PZEVs or even 4-cylinders. It just ain’t American to shame buyers for so many reasons. It isn’t even like Ford should be chastised for the improved model: it isn’t significantly different enough from the previous iteration that they wasted precious engineering hours to detract from their ability to develop extremely well executed hybrids, PZEVs and low MPG models. (Is it un-American to suggest that GM wasted hours/days/years on the new Camaro from SCRATCH when they should have pursued not making a muscle car to compete with the Mustang?)

Yes, I am sentimentally attached to the Mustang. I cried at the big Reveal last night for both its history and its future.

Originally posted here

About halfway to the school Little MissMotorMouth mentioned, ever so casually, that in April she can get her learner’s permit and begin driving. I’d forgotten how closely I was approaching that corner when I wrote this article about choosing her first car.

Out of curiosity I rang my friend and insurance agent, Jim Seilsopour, and asked him what I need to do to begin getting prepared for 6 months from now at 15 ½, when she will be allowed to have a provisional permit. According to Jim, an agent for State Farm, I will not be charged for insuring my daughter during the six month provisional permit, or until she gets her license. This seems like a huge liability for an insurer but because of my driving record, my daughters good student standing (B average or above) and the fact that she is a girl ( contrary to what the OB/GYN told me a few hours before she was born), not only is her learning time not going to cost me more but my rates will increase only about $25 a month for the 2001 Kia Spectra. It may not seem fair that insurance leans favorably towards young female drivers but Jim pointed out that it is the direct result of uninsured teens who are boys being more likely to “borrow” the family car without being licensed.

If you have a teen who is 15 and, like my daughter, you feel is trustworthy enough to begin the learning process, here are some things that you can do now to get ready for your driving teen:

• In order to get the provisional permits at 15 ½ your teen will need 30 hours of professional drivers’ education (classwork). There are many online options, local private instructors or programs through school system.-at 15 ½, your teen will need to complete DL44 and submit it to your local DMV along with parental signature, social security number, proof of true full name (birth certificate), proof of registration to complete six hours of professional driving instruction and the application fee.

• Contact your insurance agent to find out when you need to have your teenager added as a driver to your policy.

• As many parents require their teen to pay for their own insurance and gas, now is the best time to begin talking to your teen about how they are going to make money to pay for these things.

• Introduce your young driver to Ford’s Driving Skills for Life program online, and if at all possible, attend one of the events.

• In the following six months after the teen as received a permit, they will be required to drive at least 50 hours with an adult above the age of 25, 10 of the hours must be at night.

For now, I need to start discussing jobs with my girl. Although she might have been feeling pretty big for her britches this morning, all ready to begin the countdown till she can start to drive, I do know this: when I got to the gate of the school this morning right before the bell rang, she handed me her to-go cup with her coffee, and it was still completely full.

Originally posted here

In the case of Ford, their sales are being hit by an economic downturn that, at this rate, could result in an annualized rate of sales down by 5 million units in 2008. But, that said, Ford is a big part of the numbers that show half of all new cars that were sold in June 2008 were 4 cylinder cars and even though that trend may change as the year progresses, Ford has rallied and responded to the downturn, just like every other manufacturer has, by doing a Big Re-think of their model.

One of their solutions which does a double whammy on their issues is bringing in an improved Focus model that is much closer in quality and style to their European issued Focus. That meets the customer demand for more high quality, less expensive & fuel efficient cars that do not feel like the old school metal lunch boxes known as the America Focus. The second point that this covers is a much needed environmentally friendly response to other manufacturers’ solutions by offering the 2009 Focus with Partial Zero Emissions. These types of cars are commonly referred to as PZEVs.

What is interesting is that this feature of having a zero evaporative emissions from the fuel system costs the manufacturer, Ford, in this case, and extra $1200 on top of normal manufacturing costs to produce but the cost to the consumer is only $200 on top of the normal cost of a Focus.

Are they going to start giving cars away at or below their cost? Well, not exactly but because they are being required in some stated to produce these kinds of PZEVs, they also have to sell them successfully which means they have to take a bit of a loss to incentivize consumers to choose PZEV instead of a regular emissions vehicle.

So instead of keeping an older car that might get good gas mileage but is terrible for the environment, you can buy for under$16,000 a better quality, safer car that will produce less emissions during 5 round trip drives from Los Angeles to San Franciso than your gas powered lawn mower will emit in one hour of use.

The times, they are a changin’.

Originally posted here

Well, that will never happen and that kind of monitoring has a reason! It costs them (mostly man hours) to maintain their systems. The way the government is monitoring the environment is kind of the same way.

Car manufacturing is not environmentally friendly usually although Ford and Subaru are reaching in the right direction. Add to all of that the federal and state governments monitoring carbon emissions from not only the activities of the car manufacturing process but also the environmental effect that their cars cause.

In an effort to reduce emissions dramatically the State of California created a new category for Partial Zero Emission Vehicles based on an agreement between the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and the manufacturers who sell cars in California. What CARB would have really loved to have done is passed a mandate that a growing percentage of vehicles being produced were Zero Emissions Vehicles (ZEVs) but that would occur at a huge cost to the automotive manufacturers because it would require huge advances very quickly in systems such as hydrogen or electric fuel cells. I think that we all know that the recent fuel crunch and the current economy is having drastic reprecussions to the auto manufacturers sales.

By current PZEV standards, the cars are required to have a 15 year/15,000 mile warranty on emission-control components, have zero evaporative emissions on its fuel system and fall under the SULEV category. These cars are only available in the 5 “clean car states” California, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, or Vermont and will soon be available in Connecticut, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Washington. All of these states have adopted California’s pollution control rules.

Some other facts about PZEV:

• It has been said that a PZEV driving through Los Angeles County during times of high smog actually releases cleaner air out of its exhaust than it took into its system because it literally cleans the air.
• In the 15 year warrantied life of a PZEV emission sytem, it will emit less harmfull emissions than if you spilled a pint of gasoline on the pavement once. (see the picture of a gas spill at NASCAR- QUICK make another PZEV!!)
• There is a rumor about the amount of low carbon monoxide emissions from PZEVs but because this one is potentially dangerous and I do not have the facts, I am not going to publish it for now.

I wrote in my other details about PZEV in an article specifically about the Ford Focus PZEV yesterday and these emissions controls are pretty incredible and welcome in our smoggy city of Los Angeles.

Originally posted here