Speaking with Chip Foose the other day reminded me that I haven’t gotten around to posting the pics Aaron Von Minden sent of Live Wire. Back in the fall, we showed you Piero DeLuca’s Ford Coupe in the early stages at the Savage Speed Garage. The months of work leading up to the 2008 Grand National Roadster Show have paid off and Live Wire won 4 awards! Nice work guys!

More pics after the break.
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Wonders never cease to amaze me here in The Garage. The latest in a long line of really cool people I’ve met while working on The Garage is modern day hot rod icon Chip Foose. Fresh from sunny California, the master of style is also a really cool guy. It was actually very refreshing to see that Chip is a down to earth car guy who loves to share stories. We talked about kids, driving his creations and even a really cool story about Chip’s debut behind the wheel of an open wheel race car.
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I received a nice little surprise today courtesy of the folks at Ford. Tomorrow at the CIAS I get to interview master of design, Chip Foose! If all goes well with my new technology purchase we’ll have the interview as a podcast later this week.

Photo from Motor Trend

For years I’ve said I would never own another minivan. I just can’t stand the styling and the thought of driving a glorified school bus. That said, I’ve always loved an SUV that is a real truck that can tow and go off road. This whole CUV thing is somewhere in the middle and I’m more than a bit confused. I just LOVE these trucklets that look the part and offer a ton of usability that suits our family. Obviously, I’m not your average consumer. Then again, I’ve never been accused of being normal!

Now that we’ve gotten that little bit of self indulgence out of the way, let’s get on with things on the inside of the 2008 Ford Taurus X.

The interior of the Taurus X has been treated with some fine looking surfaces. The mixture of dark grey plastics and well chosen chrome give a sporty look that is well augmented by the faux carbon fibre dash trim. The seats have nicely textured leather with perforated inserts that might have been stolen from some mid Nineties European sports sedan. That is a good thing, as the dark grey leather seats look great and are comfy to boot.
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It’s 1:30 am and I’m sound asleep, visions of rally cars(either that or Drew Barrymore in the chubby days) running through my head, when I was abruptly woken up by Mamma G who says someone has been hit by a car across the street. Or maybe the neighbor’s dog. I pull on my pants and head downstairs to check things out, while Mrs. G calls the police. “are you calling about the car that hit a tree?” Sandy calls down to say there is a car in a tree somewhere.

Well, that somewhere is our next door neighbor’s front lawn. The 5 foot high pile of snow between the driveways has been obliterated and there are drunk teenagers scattered all over the street. Some are crying, some are fighting, while others are trying to get away before the police arrive.
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So what does one say about Ford’s 2008 Taurus X. The update, rebadged Freestyle certainly seems to be suffering from a bit of an identity crisis in the market and I’m not sure the change in moniker is going to help things any, but does it have any real personality on the road?

First impressions can make or break any relationship. Our first impression was of the two tone model that Los Jalops had for a week and it somehow looked like an overgrown outback wannabe. Fortunately, our tester was dead sexy looking in a nice coat of black with all sorts of well chosen chrome accents and 18 inch polished aluminum wheels. The front end treatment, from headlamps to fenders and chrome 3 bar grille is distinctly modern day Ford.
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When we picked up the 2008 Ford Focus from Ford, we were on out way home from a few days in Niagara Falls. We consists of a family of 5 and we were concerned whether we would be able to fit all of our stuff into the little sedan. Fortunately, those fears were unfounded as the Focus’ trunk is enormous, even with a sizable sub-woofer occupying the left corner.

That substantial storage locker comes at a price however, as the rear seats don’t have much in the way of legroom. The trip from Oakville to Whitby was just about far enough for the 13 & 9 year olds. The 7 year old was just happy to check out the cool mood lighting. I hate to say it, but the car would benefit from a few inches less cargo space if it allowed for more rear legroom.

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Perception and reality are often very different. If the reaction I got from friends and co-workers is any indication, Ford has some perception issues to deal with with the 2008 Ford Focus.

“Nice looking car. How much? 25 grand? Why buy that when a Civic is so much cheaper?”

When did people get the perception that Honda’s are cheap? In Canada, the base Civic sedan lists for $16,990. Compare that to $15,999 for the entry level Focus. Our tester was far from entry level, having been jammed full of every option conceivable at this level. The msrp on our little silver sedan was a lofty $24,764 before freight and pdi. Just for fun, I decided to do a little number crunching on the Honda site. All I can say is, Wow! To get all the stuff that was in our Focus, you have to begin with a Civic EXL and then start adding options. By the time you have all the goodies the matched up, you have a Civic that sells for $31,175!

Now that we’ve got a firmer grip on reality, we can get on with life with the Focus on the road.
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With all the talk about the concepts we saw in Detroit this past week, let’s travel back in time to the 2006 North American International Automotive Show and head towards the Aston Martin stand and the Rapide concept.

Ford’s then Aston Martin division showed a four door sedan essentially a DB9 coupe that has been stretched by 11.8 inches, built off the same aluminum VH architecture as both the DB9 and the two-seater V8 Vantage. It used a 480-hp; 5.9-liter V-12 engine mated to a ZF manu-matic transmission and weighed just 309 pounds more than the two-plus-two-seater DB9 coupe.

When Ford decided to skip out on Aston Martin the Rapide concept was 86’d. When the David Richards era started at Aston Martin one of the first orders of business was to resurrect the Rapide.
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I can remember years ago of auto buyers who insisted they not buy a vehicle that was built on a Monday or a Friday because it may not have had the attention to detail that it should have. Have you ever heard of cars that may have had a bad day on the assembly line or that may have been built when workers knew of an impending lay-off in the days to come?

Click here to read about one such vehicle that I worked on years ago that suffered all of the above.