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Ford Mustang SVT caught looking fierce on the 'Ring

The next-generation Ford Mustang SVT is one of the most anticipated performance cars of the moment. We've already seen it testing multiple times, but it has always been covered is some very heavy camouflage. However, Ford has just given us our best view yet of the new muscle car. According to our spy photographer, the Mustang was at the Nürburgring for high-speed testing, which meant that the Blue Oval had to remove most of the heavy obfuscation that the SVT has worn previously.
The stylish, more revealing camo makes picking out some of the more interesting details about the SVT rather easy. Starting from the front, there is the big hood scoop to feed cold air to its still mysterious engine. You can also immediately make out the model's new grille and lower front air dam. It has a vertical piece running from the bottom of the hood all the way to the ground. The aggressive styling almost gives the 'Stang the look of two fangs ready to bite down. The hood seam is even taped off here, which shows us its outline.
Around the side, it appears that the front and rear fenders are wider than stock, and the sills are certainly much larger. You can also just make out the SVT's bigger brakes behind its black wheels with a polished lip. Finally, at the rear, things appear mostly stock other than the diffuser that the exhaust outlets nestle into.

SEMA crowns Mustang, FR-S as this year's hottest cars in the building

After wrapping up the first day of the 2012 SEMA Show, organizers handed out awards for some of the trendiest vehicles on display. Since the whole point of SEMA is to show off new products available in the aftermarket world for use in cars, trucks and SUVs, each year, the show distinguishes the most popular vehicle in various segments. Not surprisingly, this year's Hottest Car and Hottest Sport Compact are the Ford Mustang and Scion FR-S, respectively, while the Ford F-Series brought home the Hottest Truck and the Jeep Wrangler was named the Hottest 4x4-SUV.
More than 2,000 companies are at this year's show, and the display booths represents a "vote" for each car to determing the trendiest vehicles in each of the four categories. It isn't clear if these awards also take cars brought by OEMs into account, but the Mustang and FR-S were definitely well represented by both OEM and aftermarket show versions.
As usual, the OEMs showed up in force at the this year's SEMA Show exhibiting a variety of cars ranging from production-intent cars like the beastly Ford Mustang Cobra Jet to much flashier rides like Scion's Carbon Stealth FR-S.

Expert: 54.5 mpg CAFE standard can be reached without many plug-ins

Johnson Controls executive Brian Kesseler isn't likely to get any holiday presents this year from Nissan chief Carlos Ghosn or Tesla Motors head Elon Musk, but lots of other folks might be happy with what he has to say about automakers' efforts to reach stricter fleetwide fuel-economy standards. Speaking at the Automotive News World Congress, Kesseler said automakers wouldn't need to sell an extensive number of plug-in vehicles in order to meet the 54.5 mile per gallon Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard the US government set in 2012 for 2025 model-year vehicles. In fact, he said, components such as stop-start engine technology, turbochargers and direct injection may actually do the trick. Already, things like smaller engine sizes and lighter cars are already playing major roles in spurring fuel-efficiency gains. Of course, Johnson Controls sells batteries specially built for stop-start systems, so Kesseler does have a bit of skin in this game. The 54.5-mpg CAFE standard equates to about a 40-mpg "real world" fuel-efficiency level. To put that into perspective, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said in a report late last year that model-year 2013 average fuel economy was an even 24 mpg. That was up from 23.6 mpg for the 2012 model year and 22.4 mpg for 2011. News Source: Automotive NewsImage Credit: AP Government/Legal Green Ford Fuel Efficiency mpg CAFE standards ecoboost johnson controls