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Curtain officially comes down on Mercury as dealers remove signage

The process of shutting down the Mercury is complete. Ford officially made the decision to close its mid-level brand in June of 2010. In the months that followed, Ford offered its dealers money to stop selling the cars, with production shutting down in September. The last Mercury, a Mariner, rolled off the assembly line in the beginning of October and former spokesperson Jill Wagner said her good-byes to both the car and her job. Now the last piece of the brand has come down as dealers are removing any and all Mercury signage from their lots.
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Translogic 174: Ford envisions the future of parking

Translogic visits Georgia Tech for a glimpse at the future of parking. First, we demo the Ford remote parking program by driving a golf cart around campus from the comfort of an off-site lab; think of remote parking as a virtual valet. Then we see how Ford's "parking spotter" works, a crowd-sourced way of finding an open space. Along the way, Translogic host Jonathon Buckley chats with Ford's global director of vehicle electrification and infrastructure, who explains how these innovative parking concepts could help us get around more efficiently. Have an RSS feed? Click here to add Translogic. Follow Translogic on Twitter and Facebook. Click here to learn more about our host, Jonathon Buckley. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT Jonathon: You turn the wheel and the cart turns the wheel because we've got to remember that the carts 150 meters down that way. I should use yards because I'm not in Australia any more. Welcome to Translogic. I'm Jonathon Buckley. Every year in this country we spend over 70 million hours looking for parking. We think that's a pretty miserable way to spend that time but Ford Motor Company and Georgia Tech have taken this problem head on by developing a parking spotter experiment and some pretty cool remote driving functions to go with it. When it comes to remote vehicle repositioning, you guys have been so far using golf carts?Mike: That's right.Jonathon: What's the goal with this type of technology?Mike: As you probably know, car sharing is becoming one of the emerging trends in mobility. With that, any type of sharing program that we looked at around the world, one of the common challenges it has is that during the end of the day, or the nighttime hours, there's something that has to happen to get all the assets back to where they need to be for the next day. Cell phone technology and broadband technologies have advanced so far that we can remotely control a vehicle from anywhere it the world. For example, we could actually take this and create a virtual valet. You and your significant other pull up to, say, a restaurant. You could potentially get out of the vehicle and then the call center could take your vehicle and park it for you. You wouldn't need to do anything [00:02:00] else other than arrive at the restaurant.Jonathon: The whole thing's pretty intuitive. It works exactly as you imagine a golf cart would work. The only difference that there really is is there's just a little bit of latency that you have to account for.

2015 SEMA Show Recap | Autoblog Minute

We take a trip to Las Vegas for a preview of the 2015 SEMA Show, the trade show for automotive aftermarket professionals and enthusiasts. Autoblog's Eddie Sabatini reports on this edition of Autoblog Minute, with commentary from Senior editor, Greg Migliore. Chevrolet Ford Honda Mazda Autoblog Minute Videos Original Video galpin