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Ford books $2.6B pretax quarterly profit

While its crosstown competitors at General Motors are smarting over a drastic drop in net income to $200 million in the second quarter, Ford has reason to celebrate. The Blue Oval has announced its own Q2 financial results, including a growing net income of $1.3 billion, a $78 million increase over last year. Pretax profits for the company reached $2.6 billion, up $44 million from 2013, but total revenue dropped slightly to $37.4 billion, down from $37.9 billion. Profits per share before one-time charges totaled 40 cents per share, beating Wall Street analysts' expectations of 36 cents a share.
Regionally, the Blue Oval performed strongly, as well. North America posted a record quarterly pre-tax profit of $2.4 billion, a $119 million increase. Europe also showed signs of turn around with its first profit in three years of $14 million after a loss of $306 million in Q2 2013. Ford is actually predicting profitability in the troubled region in 2015. Asia Pacific operations also performed well with $159 million in profits, up $29 million from last year. The only region where the business posted a loss was South America.
According to Automotive News, Ford also announced more precise plans about the changeover to build the aluminum-intensive 2015 F-150. In August, the Dearborn plant will shutdown for eight weeks to retool and its Kansas City plant will do the same next year.

Ken Block hoons his Ford F-150 RaptorTrax on the slopes

Ken Block drives Fords. Hoons the heck out of 'em, actually. Mostly Fiestas, but also the occasional Focus or Mustang. But earlier this year, the Gymkhana guru revealed his baddest Ford yet: an F-150 SVT Raptor on tracks. And true to form, here he is putting it to the test in the latest video from Monster Energy and Hoonigan Racing.
Filmed at Baldface Lodge in Nelson, BC, the video pairs Block up with snowboarders Zak Hale and Ethan Deiss for some deep-powder action. You'll want to watch the video for yourself, but the bottom line is that the RaptorTrax beats the heck out of waiting on line for the ski lift. It's enough to make us start to look forward to winter... almost.

Man turns Ford Fiesta into a one-car band

The one-man band is a rather ridiculous idea, drawing up images of one person attempting to manipulate several instruments, at once, in a vain attempt at creating music. It's usually represented by silly scenes like this. Interestingly, the concept isn't much more successful when the "man" in "one-man band" is replaced with "car," as we see in this video.
It seems that someone rigged up and edited (699 times, we might add) a Ford Fiesta, a bucket, 12 PVC pipes and the natural sounds that a car makes to come up with a song. Now, we don't recognize the tune, so we've no idea if this is a cover or an original piece. And while it's hardly Beethoven, we have to admire the amount of effort the "conductor" went to in his attempt to turn a subcompact car into a musical instrument(s). Take a look (or listen) below for the entire video.