2008 - Ford F-250 on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Ford celebrating 80 years of Aussie utes as it prepares to shutter Oz manufacturing

Ford is ending Australian production after 90 years in 2016, and with it may go perhaps the most iconic vehicles in its auto market - the ute. Car-based pickup trucks like the Ford Ranchero and Chevrolet El Camino were always more of a curiosity than a true market force here, but in Australia, they have long proven hugely popular.
As the legend goes, Ford invented the niche after a farmer's wife had asked Ford Australia's managing director for a more utilitarian car. Her request was simple: "My husband and I can't afford a car and a truck but we need a car to go to church on Sunday and a truck to take the pigs to market on Monday. Can you help?"
Ford's design team came up with a two-passenger, enclosed, steel coupe body with glass windows and a steel-paneled, wooden-frame load area in the rear. The sides of the bed were blended into the body to make it look more unified, and to keep costs down, the front end and interior were based on the Ford Model 40 five-window coupe. Power came from a V8 with shifting chores handled by a three-speed manual. Within a year, the new vehicle was ready, and production began in 1934. Lead designer Lewis Bandt christened it the coupe-utility.

Enterprise working with renter's insurance to cover $47k Mustang stolen from its lot

There was more than a bit of public indigence following the recent story of Enterprise Rent-A-Car billing a customer $47,000 to replace a Ford Mustang GT Convertible stolen from a Nova Scotia lot. To recap: Kristen Cockerill rented the Mustang for two days, returned it to the lot on a Sunday and left the keys in a secure dropbox only for Enterprise employees to find the car gone the next day.
Despite Enterprise policies stating that customers are responsible for vehicles dropped on off-days, the company has admitted that the situation could've been handled a bit better.
In a recent statement, Enterprise has backed off the big-bill story, and claims to be working with Cockerill and her insurance company to resolve the issue. Further, the Enterprise general manager overseeing Nova Scotia has spoken with the harried renter, and apologized "for the way this claim was handled during the last few months."

Ford profiles surprisingly affluent Focus ST buyers

It comes as no surprise when Ford says that 32-percent of Focus ST buyers are under 35, but we weren't expecting this: the average annual salary of Focus ST buyers is $127,000. Twenty-two percent of non-ST Focus buyers are under 35, while their average annual salary is $67,000.
We like the Focus ST because it has 252 horsepower, is genuinely fun to drive and offers great value for performance-minded car enthusiasts; facts that are not lost on customers, it seems. Ford says that the Focus ST has the highest percentage of conquest sales for a non-hybrid model it sells, and that the top-four trade-ins are from Honda, Chevrolet, Mazda and Toyota. Demand for the hot Focus is strongest in Los Angeles, Detroit, Houston and Orlando.
"[The Focus ST is] having this kind of halo effect for other vehicles we'd hoped for when we invested in the ST brand," says John Felice, vice president of US marketing, sales and service, because it's helping to boost sales of other Ford vehicles.