Behold the future of Ford! Well, we’re sure our guest won’t giveaway ALL the secrets, but if you want to know where Ford design is headed, tune in this week for guest Joel Piaskowski who is Ford’s Director of Exterior Design for the Americas. As you may remember, Joel recently came from Hyundai where he was responsible for the fresh design language of the Sonata and other models out on the roads now. We can’t wait to find out what he’s got in store for the blue oval’s product line. We’ll also take some time to remember David E. Davis Jr., a former AAH guest and an outspoken automotive legend who died earlier this week. Does this mark the end of the enthusiast magazines as we know them? John McElroy is also joined in studio by the Autoextremist, Peter De Lorenzo, as well as Mark Phelan of the Detroit Free Press.Free Videos by Ustream.TV

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(Live show will continue)

This week we continue to make good use of our LiveU backpack as we go on location to the studios of designer Camilo Pardo who created the Ford GT. We’ll be asking him what it was like to design the GT and what he thinks of car design these days. We’ll be sure to talk about what we saw at the Detroit auto show and do a bit of a wrap-up as well. John McElroy is joined in Camilo’s studio by the one and only AutoExtremist, Peter De Lorenzo.

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This week the gang is all back together and they invite Amy Marentic, the marketing manager for the newly-revealed Ford Explorer, onto the show. We’ll be asking Amy just how many people she thinks Ford can bring back to the SUV segment. Of course, the panel will also get into the news of the week like the EV number wars going on between the Volt and the LEAF. We’ll also discuss our recent trip to the VW research labs where we saw an amazing autonomous Audi TT, and we’ll talk about their EV strategy which takes the laptop-battery route. John McElroy’s in studio with Peter De Lorenzo, the Autoextremist, and David Welch from Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

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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.)

Well, the North American International Auto Show–otherwise known as the Detroit Auto Show–has made all the news it’s going to make for this year. It was a rocky year for the Motor City, and in a way, it really showed at Cobo Hall in Detroit. The digs might have been better than last year (Chrysler was a series of unadorned cars on beige carpet in 2009), but the product reveals were notably less exciting. With the patient on the slab, we called in the best team of doctors we know … our … selves. Well, anyway, we’re here with the official RoAb postmortem of NAIAS.

Is the new Cadillac XTS worthy of being the luxury brand’s new flagship? Does the Volkswagen NCC bring anything new and exciting to the German marque? Will the Honda CR-Z finally be a hybrid that’s fun to drive? We debate all these and more. Plus we’ve got another installment of our new Meet Your Roadmates segment, a Stupid Car Trick and the triumphant return of the long lost Psy-car-logy.

Play RoundAbout Episode 19

Download MP3 | | |
Featuring: Zach Bowman, Michelle Naranjo, Jeffrey Ross and Eric Trytko

Show Notes and Ustream video recording after the jump!

RoundAbout records LIVE on Fridays at 6PM ET/3PM PT. Visit RoundAboutShow.com and click Watch Live to watch our webcast and listen in on all the antics.

Show Notes:

Top Speed with Snow Tires
Ford Focus

Blind Spot: Drag racing golf carts

Psy-car-logy: ECO Anxiety

Stupid Car Trick: Ice damaged BMW X5 M

Meet Your Roadmates:
1992 Subaru SVX
2002 Nissan Quest
1982 Suzuki Samurai

Highway Hearsay: WTF Mazda RX8

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