Ford Flivver

What makes Ford’s confidence so mystifying is that the mogul had already spearheaded one attempt to put the common man in the sky, and that project had failed miserably. This is the story of that plane, the Ford Flivver.

Image of a Flivver reproduction via WikiMedia uploader FlugKerl2

In 1924, Ford acquired the Stout Metal Airplane Company and began working on various designs for civilian aircraft. Ford’s aircraft division had some successes, like the Ford Tri-Motor transport plane that rolled out in 1926 and earned worldwide acclaim when Admiral Richard Byrd flew it over the South Pole in 1929.

Henry Ford had bigger goals for the division, though. He had already put automobile ownership within the average American’s reach, so why not put a plane in every garage, too? The idea sounds ridiculous now – just as it probably did then – but Ford threw himself into the project. With engineer Otto Koppen at the helm, Ford’s aircraft division went to work building “the Model T of the air.”

Ford knew that successfully marketing a civilian plane would be tricky, so he charged Koppen with designing a small, light craft. (Koppen later said that Ford wanted a plane that would fit in his office.) By the summer of 1926, Koppen had come up with an aircraft that fit the bill. The Ford Flivver was a small single-seat plane that was just over 15 feet long and had a wingspan of just a hair under 23 feet. It ran on a 3-cylinder, 35-horsepower engine made by the Ford company Anzani, and it weighed just 350 pounds when empty.

As unlikely as the task initially sounded, Ford now had a prototype of his everyman’s plane. Now he just needed to work out the kinks, show it to the world, and get every American in his own plane. Ford unveiled the Flivver on his 63rd birthday, July 30, 1926, with the company’s trusty test pilot, Harry J. Brooks, at the controls.

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Ford and TopGear’s partnership stretches back to March when the magazine approached Ford for help on their Mad Max project. The project will now see TopGear Australia readers vote on the two competing designs which will be featured in the magazine’s July issue.

Director George Miller has begun planning the next instalment of Mad Max, tentatively called Mad Max 4: Fury Road, and TopGear Australia’s editor in chief Ewen Page is hoping at least one of the Interceptors will be featured on the celluloid.

“We always hoped that Ford would get on board, but they’ve thrown themselves at the project and the results are spectacular. We’re now hoping George Miller will call us to ask about using one of these cars in Mad Max 4, when he gets around to making it,” Page said.

The mass media often has mistakenly called any sporty looking car, like the Ford Mustang, a “sports car.” It’s given the 1955-57 Thunderbird the same description, although Ford stressed from the get-go its “new baby” was a “personal car.”

1955 Ford T-Bird

Ford Thunderbird (two-seater), 1955 It’s been on television shows, movies in print advertisements and on US postage stamp.

Ford knew the sports cars market was very limited and calling the Thunderbird a “personal car” would give it broader appeal.

The 1955-57 “T-Bird” was America’s second mass-produced sports car from a large domestic automaker, behind the Chevrolet Corvette. Smaller U.S. car producers, such as Nash and Kaiser, built a limited number of sports cars in the early 1950s to enhance their image. They saw that British sports cars, like the MG and Jaguar, drew lots of attention and sold relatively well here. But few of those U.S. sports cars were sold, largely because their producers lacked resources to compete with big automakers.

The story goes the Thunderbird two-seater was built because Ford division general manager Lewis Crusoe was admiring European autos at the 1951 Paris auto show with Ford designer George Walker.

“Why can’t we have something like that? ” Crusoe asked Walker after examining a sporty European two-seater.

“Oh, but we do,” the quick-witted Walked fibbed. He then telephoned Ford headquarters in Michigan and told it to get to work fast on a two-seater so Crusoe would have something to see after returning from Europe.

That story isn’t entirely true. Ford had been working on a two-seater, but wasn’t serious about it because sports cars accounted for a tiny percentage of the U.S. market.

The Chevy Corvette from General Motors was the only sports car from a big domestic automaker in the early 1950s. It arrived late in 1953 and GM didn’t hesitate to call it a sports car, although the first-generation (1953-55) ‘Vette was all wrong for most sports car buyers in America.

GM knew nothing about building sports cars. The Corvette was racy looking but had clumsy side curtains — accepted on British sports cars — instead of roll-up windows expected on a GM sports car. It also lacked outside door handles and had a then-odd creaky fiberglass body and ill-fitting soft top.

The Corvette had few comfort or convenience features for comfort-minded Americans, and wasn’t inexpensive. And it had a lazy, power-soaking two-speed automatic transmission, when foreign sports cars usually had m.

GM tried to make the Corvette both American and foreign — and failed on both counts. It had a hard time giving away the first Corvettes for promotional reasons to VIPs and celebrities, many of whom disliked the car. Actually, the new Corvette wasn’t all that bad despite its drawbacks, being fairly nimble and reasonably fast for its era.

In contrast, the 1955 Thunderbird had a tight steel body with smooth, clean, youthful lines and rakish long-hood/short-deck proportions. It had the same 102-inch-wheelbase as the Corvette and sexy Jaguar XK-140 but echoed the styling theme of full-size 1955 Fords.

The new T-Bird used a good number of regular Ford parts to hold costs down. They included headlights, taillights and instruments. The parts sharing also let Ford successfully use the 2,980-pound Thunderbird to rub off some of its sporty, glamorous image on the restyled regular Fords.

The new Thunderbird was better for 99 percent of the U.S. market than the Corvette. It could be had with options including power steering, brakes, windows and a power front bench seat designed to look like two bucket seats. (Only two adults actually fit, so the 1955-57 T-Bird always has been described as a two-seater.).

The new Thunderbird came with a standard removable hard top or optional, snug power soft top — or both. It even was offered with a push-button radio.

By 1957, you could get a T-Bird with automatic windshield washers, a Dial-O-Matic power seat with fore-aft, up-down memory and a radio with volume that rose as engine speed increased.

Powering the 1955 T-Bird was a V-8 from Ford Motor’s Mercury division. The 292-cubic-inch engine generated 193 horsepower with a three-speed manual transmission and 198 with the Ford-O-Matic three-speed automatic transmission. Now this was an engine Americans could appreciate.

Most didn’t know or care the T-Bird V-8 wasn’t as good as the sensational new 1955 Chevy V-8, but it was potent enough to give the T-Bird good performance. And it handled better than the average car. A privately entered model beat rival foreign cars in the production sports car class at the Daytona Speed Weeks in 1955, hitting 124.6 mph.

But speed wasn’t what the new T-Bird was all about. Rather, it was essentially a stylish, luxurious, upper-middle-class cruiser — a car perfect to give your girlfriend, wife or mistress for in-town showing off.

By today’s standards, the 1950s Thunderbird two-seater had an offbeat driving position, with occupants sitting low and a big steering wheel set close to a driver’s chest. There also was a bad blind spot with the hardtop in place. It’s why “porthole” circular rear side windows were put in that top in 1956 and 1957.

The 1956 model had a “continental” spare tire put outside in a rear metal case because it occupied too much trunk space. The spare not only greatly improved trunk room, it also shifted weight slightly to the rear and slightly improved the car’s good balance.

The Corvette made do with an old, slightly modified Chevy six-cylinder until 1955, when Chevy’s new V-8 arrived. But the 1955 “Vette” looked the same as the 1953 model. It was almost dead until GM began making it a genuine sports car with more performance and comfort features in 1956, and its sales finally began to take off.

GM hated the rival Thunderbird because that Ford model was an instant success. Ford intended the T-Bird to mainly be an “image car,” with annual sales of only 10,000 units. The automaker was surprised when 16,155 T-Birds were snapped up. That compared with merely 674 Corvettes produced in 1955.

The 1955 Thunderbird had base price of $2,944, or virtually the same price as that year’s Corvette. The T-Bird cost more than Ford’s $2,224 Fairlane Sunliner convertible. And even the Thunderbird’s optional convertible top added $290.

Ford didn’t want to mess much with success, so the 1956 Thunderbird had the same styling as its predecessor. However, its ventilation was improved and the ride was made more comfortable. The horsepower race was on, so power of the base engine was raised to 202 with the manual transmission and a larger 312-cubic-inch V-8 was added. It produced 215 horsepower with the manual gearbox and 225 with the automatic transmission.

Thunderbird sales dipped a bit in 1956 to 15,631 cars, but sales soared to 21,380 units in 1957 when model year production ran through the end of the calendar year. It still far outsold the Corvette. The 1957 T-Bird’s price had climbed to $3,408, but it remained an attractive buy.

The 1957 Thunderbird was arguably the best 1950s T-Bird two-seater, although it lacked the clean lines of the first two models. It had a new combination front bumper/grille and longer rear end, which again enclosed the spare tire. Rear fenders had modest canted fins, as did regular 1957 Fords because Ford wanted to maintain the potent Thunderbird sales influence on regular models.

A new instrument panel from full-sized Fords had gauges nestled under a cowl, and arriving were options such as the Dial-O-Matic power seat, which automatically went to a pre-set position when the car was started.

A manual-transmission T-Bird still had the 292-cubic-inch V-8, but its horsepower jumped to 212. Also offered was a 312-cubic-inch V-8 with 245, 270 or 285 horsepower. And there were 208 supercharged “F” Thunderbirds with the “312? V-8 that produced 300 to 340 horsepower, mainly for racing. A 1957 T-Bird hit 146.3 mph during the Daytona Speed Weeks.

The Thunderbird was successfully turned into a four-seater for 1958 to improve sales and profits. But the two-seater had proved in the end it could be a true high-performance car, if not a sports car.

Ford sold a modern retro-style Thunderbird two-seater from 2002 through 2005 that resembled the 1955-57 model. While decent, it was just moderately successful.

It’s often impossible to match an original.

There are other impressive specs. But the ones you’re no doubt most interested in are those you can really feel: power ratings of 411 horsepower and 434 lb.-ft. of torque that no other engine in its class can match. And if you’re into towing for business or recreation, how does an 11,300-lb. tow rating sound? For additional crash protection, the safety cage within the F-150 features advanced hydroformed high-strength steel. Additionally, continuous tubes run from the A-pillar base through the roof rail to form a safety cage around the occupants of the truck. And dual hydroformed front tubes, located on either side of the engine bay, are shaped to absorb impacts.

The F-150 offers occupant protection with a host of standard safety systems. In addition to front seat airbags in the Personal Safety System®, the Ford F-150 provides front side-impact airbags and the Safety Canopy® System with its state-of-the-art roll-fold technology. All six airbags are now standard equipment on all F-150 models.

Car shoppers expressed their love for small crossovers more and more as Gas prices climb to all time highs.The Escape, a popular two-row model  sits between the entry-level XLS and range-topping Limited, all three of which can be had with either front- or all-wheel drive. Our test car had Ford’s 2.5-liter four-cylinder; a V-6 is optional on the XLT and Limited.

A 3.0-liter V-6 is optional, and its 240 horsepowerconsiderably outpaces the four-cylinder’s 171 hp. We’ve driven the V-6 in years past, and it’s appreciably punchier, though still a bit raspy. It pairs with the standard six-speed automatic, and the combination makes the V-6 Escape a capable mover.

Combined EPA gas mileage for a front-drive, automatic four-cylinder is 23 mpg. All-wheel drive drops the rating to 22 mpg. .

Outdated Interior

Ford Mustang in Houston

Don’t be fooled. The truth is that guys who really love to drive (not like, love) will save up a few more months and buy a GT with the new 5.0-liter V8. It’s even worth the higher insurance premiums.

Why? Torque.

Now you’re lighting up your Twitter account typing out something like, “Come on, the new 2011 Ford Mustang’s got 305 hp. That thing’s got to move out. Car and Crack magazine said it’s fast.” Don’t misunderstand. The 2011 Ford Mustang V6 is not slow. With a good launch and a tight gearchange it hits 60 in just 5.6 seconds (5.3 seconds with rollout like on a drag strip). If you’ve been driving a worn-out Civic, a sub-6-second 0-60-mph will feel like you’ve strapped yourself to a bottle rocket.

Ford F-150 Dyno Test

We also made sure we had two 2011 F-150s to compare on the same day on K&N’s SuperFlow chassis dyno – an EcoBoost V-6 and a 5.0-liter V-8. Both trucks were 145-inch-wheelbase models with four-wheel drive and 3.73 rear axles. The EcoBoost F-150 ($41,300) was a SuperCab FX4 with a 6.5-foot cargo box and 4,650 miles on its odometer. The 5.0 F-150 ($40,715) was a SuperCrew with a 5.5-foot cargo box and 3,130 miles. All the tires were identical: Wrangler SR-A P275/65R18 114T.

The SuperFlow eddy-current dyno is different from the Dynojet inertia-type dyno we’ve used in the past. Whereas an inertia dyno measures engine power at a vehicle’s rear wheels based on how fast it can spin heavy drums, an eddy-current dyno adds the ability to simulate a load on the trucks by using electro-magnets to add resistance to drum spin, as if they were pulling a trailer.

By Greg Whale and Mike Levine, Photos by Greg Whale

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So, here’s the good news: as a vehicle, the award-winning, second-generation Edge is excellent. It looks even better than the original, both inside and out, and provides all the interior space and cargo room you’d expect. Pick up the top-end Sport model, and you’ll also get a stiffer suspension and 22-inch wheels, along with a host of high-tech features. Unfortunately, while the top-level Sport is a ton of fun to drive, its many features are a bit overwhelming.

Ford bills its new SYNC with MyFord Touch system as a major innovation, combining the highly effective voice controls of SYNC with a touch-based control setup. MyFord Touch integrates vehicle systems with a large, dash-mounted LCD and two smaller screens flanking the speedometer, both connected to individual thumb-pads on the steering wheel. It sounds like a great idea, enabling drivers to keep their hands on the wheel at all times, but Ford has perhaps provided too many menus and choices. As a result, MyFord Touch proves far more distracting than it should be.

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The smooth-shifting six-speed is mated well to the 2.5-liter 4-cylinder engine and the car’s dynamic abilities. The 2.5-liter is a big, torquey 4-cylinder that features all-aluminum construction and dual overhead cams. It produces 175 horsepower.

hat may not seem like much, but the Fusion makes the absolute most of thehorses on tap. Opting for the 3.0-liter V6 gets you up to 240 horsepower and a chance for all-wheel drive, but the V6 is only available with a 6-speed automatic transmission. Even the range-topping Fusion Sport, whose 3.5-liter V6 makes 263 horsepower, can only be had with an automatic.

Really, though, you don’t need six cylinders to have plenty of fun in this car. The engaging engine/gearbox combination enables the driver to make the most of the Fusion’s enjoyable chassis. The sporty independent short/long-arm front and multilink rear setup offers excellent feedback through the turns and a composed and stable ride on the freeway.

The Fusion is responsive and grippy, even in base form with cheap tires. Though not an outright sports sedan, it’s an entertaining drive thanks to responsive, communicative steering and a very solid and composed suspension.

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engine tear-down

Ford Motor Co. made some history over the weekend when it did a complete engine tear-down and inspection of a “torture tested” 3.5-liter EcoBoost twin-turbo V-6 used in the latest F-150 at the 2011 North American International Auto Show in Detroit.

Auto shows, like NAIAS, typically showcase the latest metal in fancy displays bathed in brilliant lights and staffed with beautiful spokesmodels. They’re about as far as you can get from the garages that all cars and trucks will eventually require a visit to for service and maintenance. But for an hour Saturday, Ford turned part of its spotless blue and white display space inside Detroit’s Cobo Hall into a service bay for the last chapter of the F-150 EcoBoost torture test.

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