2005 Ford F350 Diesel 4x4 Srw Long Bed Crew Cab Leather Powerstroke Texas Truck on 2040-cars

Auto blog

3dCarbon now offering body kit for Ford Fusion

A factory-backed body kit by 3dCarbon is now available to Ford Fusion owners who want their car to stand out from the crowd while not being too flashy. The body kit adds a more aggressive front spoiler, side skirts, rear body trim and spoiler that are, in fact, integrated quite nicely into the Fusion's already-comely styling, just as 3dCarbon claims. All Fusions with the kit also receive dual exhaust ports with the stainless-steel exhaust surrounds usually reserved for the Titanium package Fusion EcoBoost models.
A nice detail of 3dCarbon's injection-molded urethane body kit is that it has undergone crash testing to certify that it can withstand crashes up to five miles per hour. Because of this, the kit is warrantied by 3dCarbon for five years or 50,000 miles, much like Ford's warranty on its own parts. In fact, the kit is available through participating Ford dealers and can be financed through Ford Motor Credit. Buyers can purchase the kit - pre-painted or unpainted - and install it themselves, or it can be purchased with a new Ford Fusion and installed at the dealer, pre-painted to factory specifications. Of course, it can also be ordered directly from the source. Take a look at the press release below for more detailed information on the body kit, and let us know what you think of it in Comments.

Malcolm Gladwell reflects on engineering, recalls, and compromise

Journalist Malcolm Gladwell has made a career taking on big, complicated topics and humanizing them to make the unwieldy understandable. He has already done this in bestsellers like The Tipping Point and Outliers, and now he has brought the same approach to automotive recalls in a long piece for The New Yorker. The article titled The Engineer's Lament is framed around an interview with the former head of Ford's recall office about the famous Ford Pinto campaign where the position of the compact's fuel tank could cause it to explode in rear-end collisions. Plus, there are detours into Toyota's unintended acceleration cases and the General Motors ignition switch problem. While all the history is illuminating, the heart of the story comes from an examination at the thought process of engineers, and how their thinking differs from other professions. Gladwell comes off as sympathetic to auto engineers in this piece. While he admits that they often approach problems in a sterile way, the writer doesn't try point that out as a failing. It's merely a fact to be understood. The story itself is quite lengthy, but well worth a read if you have the time for an insiders view into how these recalls are assessed on the inside.

Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 has a bit of a dyno issue

We're of the mind that each and every dyno should come with Murphy's Law painted in big, visible letters down the side. For every ten successful dyno runs out there, it seems there's one where events to horribly wrong. Take, for example, the video below. The clip shows what happens when a Ford Shelby GT500 and a mobile dyno have a bit of a disagreement at the Performance Expo 24 in Sherbrooke, Quebec. We won't spoil the results for you, but we will say there's some substantial carnage involved.
It's unclear just how much damage ensues from the dust up or whether anyone was harmed in the incident, but from the looks of things, everyone made it out without serious injury. If only we could say the same for the machines involved. Check out the video below.