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Filed under: Tech, Videos, Ford, Lincoln, Mercury

Autoblog talks EcoBoost with Ford Powertrain Direc

Turbocharging has long been associated with performance, but the 103-year-old technology is also very efficient. A small displacement gasoline engine with a turbocharger can equal or out-perform similarly sized naturally aspirated motors while also saving fuel. Europe is all over turbo engines for everything from high-performance Porsches to family wagons, but here in the States, force-fed engines are mainly sold in low volume sports cars.

Ford intends to jump into the turbocharging arena in a big way with “EcoBoost“, and is planning to move up to 500,000 vehicles in the U.S. annually with twin-spool technology. Ford claims its EcoBoost suite of engine technoloies will give customers fuel savings of up to 20% versus a like-powered naturally aspirated engine, and the first samples are scheduled to go on sale in about a year. We wanted to learn more about Ford’s plan, so we accepted an invitation to speak with Ford’s director of Advanced Powertrain, Dan Kapp. Click play on the video above to see what Dan has to say about EcoBoost.

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Filed under: Tech, Videos, Ford, Lincoln, Mercury

Autoblog talks EcoBoost with Ford Powertrain Direc

Turbocharging has long been associated with performance, but the 103-year-old technology is also very efficient. A small displacement gasoline engine with a turbocharger can equal or out-perform similarly sized naturally aspirated motors while also saving fuel. Europe is all over turbo engines for everything from high-performance Porsches to family wagons, but here in the States, force-fed engines are mainly sold in low volume sports cars.

Ford intends to jump into the turbocharging arena in a big way with “EcoBoost“, and is planning to move up to 500,000 vehicles in the U.S. annually with twin-spool technology. Ford claims its EcoBoost suite of engine technoloies will give customers fuel savings of up to 20% versus a like-powered naturally aspirated engine, and the first samples are scheduled to go on sale in about a year. We wanted to learn more about Ford’s plan, so we accepted an invitation to speak with Ford’s director of Advanced Powertrain, Dan Kapp. Click play on the video above to see what Dan has to say about EcoBoost.

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Filed under: Car Buying, Gadgets, Tech, Aston Martin

Aston is working with its agency, Splendid, to create the DBS of car configurators, and by the looks of it, the site must have cost a lot more to build than a DBS does. Splendid started off by creating a 3D render of the car that actually looks photorealistic and not like a virtual representation that gets lost somewhere in the uncanny valley. When you change the color — to any of 2.5 billion combinations, according to the DBS designer — you aren’t simply tinting a model of a car, you’re looking at a car in that color.

Inside, the configurator is detailed enough to let you zoom in to see individual stitches on various interior surfaces. And each part of the car is highlighted, so you can choose your wheels with full-screen images and get complete specs on the wheels alone. And when you need a break from deciding on the red brakes or silver, you can watch videos and create your own video channel.

After you’ve configured the car you want, the fun continues at the dealership. Dealers will be provided with Samsung UMPC’s that allow further configuration — even matching the color of an item you bring in for the paint job on your DBS. It’s a setup worthy of Q himself, although they didn’t mention whether you could install a defibrillator in the glovebox. Click the link to check out a demo of the keynote video that explains it. (Note: you need Silverlight to view it.) Thanks for the tip, Ben!

[Source: Mix]

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Filed under: Motorsports, Coupes, Sports/GTs, Ford

Click above for a high resolution gallery of the FR500S Mustang

If there’s anything better than racing on TV, it’s racing on HD TV. Just a few days after the first customers received their Mustang FR500S race cars, Discovery Channel’s HD Theater announced that it would be doing a three-part television series on the special Ford Mustang Challenge racing series that exclusively features these pony cars. The show will take a detailed look at the inaugural year of the series, from the first testing sessions this month all the way until the last race in September. Miniature in-car HD cameras will capture all of the action on track, and the identical specs of each Mustang ensure that there will be plenty of it. There’s no word on when the series will actually debut on HD Theater (we asked, they really don’t know), but the press release after the jump provides all the available details for now.

[Source: Ford]

Continue reading Ford Racing Mustang Challenge gets HD reality series

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Here are some stories we’re following for you on March 31, 2008:

• A team of your own - If you’ve never played fantasy baseball before here’s a nice little primer including some web resources for getting started.
• Goodell could get another tool to defend sport - The NFL is fed up with “Spygate” and player tampering so they are fighting back with new technology.
• Sports themes dominate new game releases - New games releases for spring 2008 include a range of sport themes, with a new version of Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 specially for Wii, a blue tennis-playing hedgehog, high-def racing cars and a “god of war” combat game, complete with high gore and ancient Greek mythology.
• U.S. Olympic Committee and GE Announce Research Partnership to Measure Benefits of Advanced Ultrasound Technology on U.S. Olympic Athletes - Interesting research that hopes to demonstrate that health monitoring and early intervention leads to injury prevention and enhanced health and sports performances for athletes. Going beyond the hypobaric chamber!

That’s all, folks!

Filed under: Car Buying, Plants/Manufacturing, Chrysler, Ford, GM

If you’re in the market for a Focus sedan, the question is, exactly what kind of Focus will you buy? According to Ford’s option sheets, there are 100,000 different combinations you can create. Eighty percent of Focus sedan sales, however, are comprises of just 4,000 of those combos. This glut of choice has increasingly become an issue that translates into lost money, unhappy customers and overwhelmed dealers for the Big Three, and now they’re going to trim the options tree.

Ford’s new marketing chief Jim Farley has said, “Coming from Toyota, I can tell you that the opportunity is there to reduce the complexity of our line-up.” Toyota cars are not known for an obscene wealth of choice, although Nissan has found itself with too many choices on the Maxima and Altima, and has cut them down recently. Meanwhile, the domestics are working to figure out how to rationalize the choices they offer — and the money they spend on them — with the need to give people want they want.

Ford is doing it by shrinking the number of “buildable combinations of the 2008 Focus by 99 percent.” Chrysler has reduced its own complexity by a claimed 93-percent over the last two years by jettisoning options. And GM’s global platform strategy aims to severely curtail the expense of developing and building a car. Said marketer John Tulloch, the manufacturers can win this fight “if the savings are used to improve remaining models and reduce sticker prices.” We can only hope.

[Source: Yahoo]

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• ESPN The Magazine’s review of Congresspeople about baseball was, uh, interesting. [Wrigleyville23]
• Jose Calderon, nice fella. [Food Court Lunch]
• Musing on Yankee Stadium’s last Opening Day. [Armchair GM]
• God, the Blazers and Monty Williams. [Blazers Edge]
• Life as a fantasy baseball virgin. [BillGoodykoontz]
• Some Dodger Stadium issues. [Beantown West]
• Listen to what Matt Millen says, people. [SideLion Report]
• All of today’s opening day lineups. [Walk Off Walk]
• Preach, Ichiro, preach! [Enjoy The Enjoyment]

There are those among us brimming with excitement for the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays season. I count myself among the hopeful — I decided yesterday, along with my roommate, to adopt an AL team to follow in 2008, and based on a combination of exciting young players and a high real-to-fantasy-player ratio on each of our teams, (he has Evan Longoria, I have Scott Kazmir and the recently departed Delmon Young), we’ve officially chosen the 2008 Rays. We couldn’t be more excited for the season to start.

It’s good to see someone — according to the Youtube profile, Rays bullpen coach Bobby Ramos — seems just as excited as we are.

(HT: You Been Blinded)

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Anquan Boldin stays busy throughout the offseason, rehabbing injuries and raising money for his charity. Our Jamey Eisenberg recently caught up with one of Arizona’s star receivers.

So my position that the first-ever all-1-seed Final Four ruins the Final Four has provoked a bunch of very good comments, found in the post below.

(UPDATE: Commenters continue to make very strong points on this.)

We can agree to disagree — and many of you make good points — but I think it is one of the better arguments we will see this year:

Is an uber-predictable Final Four made up of all the teams that were expected to make it — for the first time in Tournament history — a good thing… or a bad thing?

I argue in the lead of today’s Sporting News column that I think it is a bad thing.

Not that any of the teams themselves are inherently bad, but simply that if nothing else, the NCAA Tournament’s appeal is in its unpredictability — and this outcome is entirely predictable.

(UPDATE: As some Commenters have pointed out, the more “predictable” outcome would have been all four 1-seeds NOT making the Final Four. Great point.)

Longtime readers know that I appreciate and honor the concept of “novelty” (or, its sibling, “superlative”) more than any other quality in sports. It is the lens I view sports through.

So please know that the novelty of this being the first time all four No. 1 seeds have reached the Final Four appeals to my deep appreciation of novelty.

Something just strikes me wrong about it.

I don’t feel this way about the NFL or MLB or the NBA or college football or even the women’s NCAA Tournament (for which I argue in the column that an all 1-vs-2 Elite Eight is a VERY good thing for women’s hoops).

The NCAA Tournament is my favorite sports event of the year. The NCAA Tournament, for me, is defined much in part for rejection of any sense of “inevitable” success for the favorites.

So please allow me at least a 24-hour period to have an allergic reaction to the shattering of that definition. It had to happen at some point, I guess. But I don’t think it’s a good thing.

More from today’s Sporting News column: MLB Opening Night was a huge success for MLB and the Nats and Nationals Park and Ryan Zimmerman… MLB Opening Day is filled with ace-heavy storylines… the NBA West is must-track on a daily basis… Isiah Thomas to Indiana University?… and more… after the jump!

Unrelated: I participated in my first-ever fantasy baseball “auction” draft on Friday afternoon, and I think it will be hard for me to go back to straight snake-drafts. It was a ton of fun — even if my lack of experience led me to some atrocious choices early, middle and late. (I did, however, spend more than Average Auction Value for Ryan Zimmerman… for one morning, at least, I feel like I did something right.)

– D.S.