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Stolen Lincoln Town Car stars in wacky GTA-like airborne crash

  If we can believe our eyes, a carload of people is lucky to be alive. What we know is what's on the videos stitched together above — in the first POV, a white Lincoln Town Car busts through a barrier at the end of Cumberland Street in San Francisco, a dead end road. Looks ridiculous, not crazy. The crazy part comes in the second POV, taken from a Nest camera across Sanchez Street. The Town Car was going fast enough to jump-launch itself over the concrete berm at the base of the barrier, nosedive into the hill below, flip over end-over-end into a tree below that, then slide down the tree to land on its roof at the base of a set of steps going down to Sanchez Street below Cumberland.  The kind bit is when a Good Samaritan runs to the Town Car and opens the front passenger door. The wacky bit is when four people slowly emerge from the town car while engaging in quite a bit of oddball banter — one woman who was in the back seat says "I'm sorry" and "I love you" to someone named Kevin numerous times — then walk away. The silent couple runs up the steps, Kevin and his apologetic, loving associate sashay down Sanchez Street. A report from local channel KTVU (full report below) via Carscoops, says, "Witnesses told KTVU the incident started with a carjacking." Compiling comments on the second YouTube vid alleges the car's occupants carjacked a DoorDash driver — a situation that's far more common that we'd have guessed before looking into this story — and that the man who opened the door "noted several bottles of open liquor, two Tasers, and the police reported a gun was found in the car." If the second bit is true, that and copious amounts of adrenaline would explain why the crew was eager and able to skedaddle. The occupants haven't been found; of course police are looking for them. KTVU writes, "Anyone with information about the incident is asked to contact the San Francisco Police Department at 415-575-4444 or text a tip to TIP411 and begin the message with SFPD."

Here are a few of our automotive guilty pleasures

It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. The world is full of cars, and just about as many of them are bad as are good. It's pretty easy to pick which fall into each category after giving them a thorough walkaround and, more important, driving them. But every once in a while, an automobile straddles the line somehow between good and bad — it may be hideously overpriced and therefore a marketplace failure, it may be stupid quick in a straight line but handles like a drunken noodle, or it may have an interior that looks like it was made of a mess of injection-molded Legos. Heck, maybe all three. Yet there's something special about some bad cars that actually makes them likable. The idea for this list came to me while I was browsing classified ads for cars within a few hundred miles of my house. I ran across a few oddballs and shared them with the rest of the team in our online chat room. It turns out several of us have a few automotive guilty pleasures that we're willing to admit to. We'll call a few of 'em out here. Feel free to share some of your own in the comments below. Dodge Neon SRT4 and Caliber SRT4: The Neon was a passably good and plucky little city car when it debuted for the 1995 model year. The Caliber, which replaced the aging Neon and sought to replace its friendly marketing campaign with something more sinister, was panned from the very outset for its cheap interior furnishings, but at least offered some decent utility with its hatchback shape. What the two little front-wheel-drive Dodge models have in common are their rip-roarin' SRT variants, each powered by turbocharged 2.4-liter four-cylinder engines. Known for their propensity to light up their front tires under hard acceleration, the duo were legitimately quick and fun to drive with a fantastic turbo whoosh that called to mind the early days of turbo technology. — Consumer Editor Jeremy Korzeniewski  Chevrolet HHR SS: Chevy's HHR SS came out early in my automotive journalism career, and I have fond memories of the press launch (and having dinner with Bob Lutz) that included plenty of tire-smoking hard launches and demonstrations of the manual transmission's no-lift shift feature. The 260-horsepower turbocharged four-cylinder was and still is a spunky little engine that makes the retro-inspired HHR a fun little hot rod that works quite well as a fun little daily driver.

Quitting Mexico factory helps bring down Ford earnings $200 million in 2016

Ford released its 2016 earnings report this morning, and despite a fourth quarter net loss it proved to be the automaker's second most successful year ever, following record breaking numbers in 2015. Losses for the year come from a number of sources, including accounting changes and a $200 million hit for backing out of the small-car factory in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. Despite the loss, come March 9 about 56,000 UAW-represented employees will receive a $9,000 profit-sharing check. That, like most of Ford's other 2016 metrics, is slightly down from the year before, but it's still the second best profit-sharing payment ever. Total net income was $4.6 billion, down $2.8 billion from 2015. Total revenue for 2016 was $151.8 billion, up $2.2 billion. Ford's earnings report lists a global market share of 7.6 percent, down a tenth from 2015. Ford's European and Asia-Pacific markets posted their best and second best pre-tax profits respectively. The South American, Middle East, and African markets all took hits because of unstable economies and other external factors. Ford expects to have another down year in 2017 as it invests in new and emerging markets and focuses more on its mobility projects.Related Video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. News Source: Ford via Automotive NewsImage Credit: Getty Earnings/Financials Plants/Manufacturing UAW/Unions Ford Lincoln Mexico ford earnings