2013 Ford Fusion Energi Titanium on 2040-cars

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Wrap up some fun with Ford's commercial vehicle configurator

Ford has combined multiple steps into one with its commercial vehicle configurator, which allows users to choose, design and place orders for the Transit, Transit Connect, E-Series vans and F-Series Super Duty trucks.
The most interesting part of the new configurator is a fairly robust design tool. Users are able to choose paint color and wrap the vehicle, and then create their own graphics. No materials are needed - Ford provides numerous background textures, text boxes, plenty of shapes and 20 categories of images including floral, construction, plumbing and skylines. Self-created designs or images can be uploaded to the system as well.
We played around with the design tool a bit and uploaded our own image to create the Autoblog Podcast Live van you see here. Feel free to check out the configurator and make your own design.

VW going turbo-only in 3 to 4 years

This really was a matter of when, rather than if. Volkswagen will apparently be the first manufacturer to phase out naturally aspirated engines in favor of turbocharging its full slate. VW is kind of responsible for ushering in this push towards small-displacement, turbocharged engines that's taken the industry by storm. When it dropped its direct-injection, 2.0-liter turbo in the 2005 GTI it demonstrated that strapping an iron long to an engine can enhance the powertrain as a whole. VW made fuel economy gains, while also giving a linear, non-laggy turbo experience that it has replicated, model-after-model, to this day.
Speaking with The Detroit News, Volkswagen's executive Vice President of Group Quality, Marc Trahan, told the paper that, "We only have one normally aspirated gas engine, and when we go to the next generation vehicle that it's in, it will be replaced. So three, four years maximum."
Really, it's hard to get teary-eyed about either of these engines going away. VW has access to smaller powerplants that could easily match the performance of the 2.5 five-cylinder and the 3.6 V6, while gobbling up less fuel and providing a better driving experience. What we are sad about is that a similar statement about the extinction of NA engines came from the Vice President of Powertrain Engineering at Ford, Joe Bakaj. We'd certainly get teary-eyed over a world without Ford's excellent 5.0-liter V8.

Ford brings FPV Falcon production in house [w/video]

For the first time since 1976, Ford of Australia is bringing the assembly of its stonking Ford Performance Vehicle line back in-house to the company's Broadmeadows and Geelong facilities. That's a point of pride for FPV, which builds high-performance versions of the Australian Falcon model like the F6, GS and the heroic GT seen here.
In the video below, we hear FPV employees talking in hushed tones about the important legacy that cars like the GT have for Australian gearheads of all stripes, and how proud they are to say that hand-built machines like this GT R-Spec with its Boss 355 engine are now rolling out of their home base. For our part, we're just dying to drive this version of the Coyote V8; the engine is rocking a "Miami" supercharger from Harrop and makes some 450 horsepower.
Continue on below for the video, or you can check out some images of the new FPV at the facility, as well as a gallery of the GT R-Spec car.