1957 Thunderbird 312ci V-8 on 2040-cars

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Dealers price gouging Ford Mustang 50th Anniversary Edition by up to $20k [UPDATE]

UPDATE: Sheehy Ford's Cory Belcher got back to us, confirming that the price premium was related to the limited nature of the 50th Anniversary Mustang and that the figure listed was based on what other dealers were charging, while adding that the dealership was "very flexible" on the final price of the special edition car. So while there remains a hefty markup, it's possible that consumers could get out the door without spending quite so much over MSRP. It's no secret that dealers take some – let's call them "liberties" – with the prices on vehicles that are very new, highly in demand or available in very limited numbers. As we've explained before, they're well within their rights to charge so-called market value adjustments. We don't usually see these adjustments on mainstream vehicles, though. Then again, you could argue that the 2015 Ford Mustang 50th Anniversary Edition is not necessarily a mainstream vehicle. It starts at $46,170, which isn't peanuts, but it's still a Mustang. There's still a large portion of the buying public that could put one in their driveway, if they so chose. Then again, maybe they can't. That's because dealers are (still) issuing massive premiums on top of MSRP for the limited-edition model. It's happening at Sheehy Ford Gaithersburg, where a salesperson named Lou confirmed to Autoblog that the dealership is charging around $20,000 over MSRP on not one, but two Anniversary Editions. He explained that Sheehy isn't alone in the upcharge: "We like to see what other dealers are asking for," he told us, in reference to the limited edition 'Stang. We have a message in for the dealership's general manager for deeper info, too, and will update this post when/if we hear back. We corroborated Lou's story, though, with another Maryland area dealer, Century Ford, who confirmed that the $46,995 listed on the dealer's website for its Wimbledon White Anniversary car was incorrect, and the actual price was "around $64,000." He echoed Lou's reasoning for the upcharge, while adding that dealers are likely only going to see one or two examples, of the 1,964 produced. Perhaps the most worrying part of this entire affair is the sense of deceit that accompanies it. Neither of the dealers we spoke to copped to the market value adjustments on their website. We had to call and ask specifically about the cars in question to get the actual price.

2021 Ford F-150 Raptor vs. 2021 Ram 1500 TRX | How they compare on paper

Yep, the F-150 Raptor is back, though you'd be forgiven for not noticing that it ever left. Ford's off-road model is taking a few months off to accommodate the broader 2021 F-150 redesign from which it benefits. And the fine folks over at Ram took full advantage of that lull to launch the new 702-horsepower TRX, which in one big way (hint: it's the engine) stands at the top of the performance pickup heap. Ford says that's all going to change in 2022, but for now, the Raptor returns with a familiar 3.5-liter EcoBoost V6 (albeit with an unspecified power figure) along with several other revisions to Ford's tried-and-true formula. The 2020 Raptor was already a worthy adversary to the beefy Ram despite the latter's definitive power advantage, so how has that picture evolved for 2021? Let's take a look.    Powertrain This is a big question mark for the Ford right now, but it seems reasonable to expect a bit more than the outgoing model's 450 horsepower and 510 pound-feet of torque. The TRX's Hellcat-sourced powerplant needs no introduction. Its 702 horsepower will easily eclipse whatever Ford has planned for its 3.5-liter twin-turbo V6, even if the V6 has more grunt than it did before, but that's OK. It's not the base-model Raptor's job to dethrone the TRX in straight-line speed; that honor will go to the 2022 Raptor R. We also don't know what the Raptor's fuel economy will be like, but we suspect it will be better than the TRX's, if only slightly.  Both these trucks come with four-wheel-drive standard, and they both have a number of drive modes that alter the powertrain’s characteristics depending on the terrain. Baja mode transforms the trucks into the desert runners that they both are at heart, but theyÂ’re plenty capable of crawling around rocks, too. We wonÂ’t know for certain which is best at specific tasks until we can get them both on (or off) equal ground. Suspension / off-roading capability And the ground is where things narrow significantly, both on- and off-paper. The specs are freakishly similar when we compare ground clearance, approach/departure angles and water fording, but the Raptor's leapfrog here is clearly evident. Both trucks utilize a coil-sprung rear suspension now, with Ford having abandoned the Raptor's previous leaf-spring setup with the redesign.  The two use different shocks to handle 100-mph-plus desert running.

Project Ugly Horse: Part VI

Solid axle? What solid axle?
I was fully prepared to embark on a seven-day journey down a rabbit hole of broken bolts, internet hearsay and consternation.
This should not have gone this easily. Having a long and checkered history of simple projects punctuated by much wailing and gnashing of knuckles, I was fully prepared to embark on a seven-day journey down a rabbit hole of broken bolts, internet hearsay and consternation when I finally decided to lay hands on the '89 Mustang with the goal of relieving the car of its stock rear axle. Instead, it took less than a full morning's worth of work to carve the old 7.5-inch solid axle from its moorings and mock up something, well, different.