Ford’s US Sales Free-Fall By 14% in March

While many at Ford would wish this were an April fool’s day joke, it isn’t; in March, Ford, Lincoln and Mercury sales totalled 213,074 units, down 14 percent compared with a year ago. Total Ford Motor Company sales, including Jaguar, Land Rover, and Volvo, totalled 227,143, again down 14 percent versus March 2007.
The American carmaker blamed its poor March results to the crumbling SUV and truck sales. In March Ford Motor Company sold 146,228 SUVs and trucks, down from 175,491 last March (-16.7%). In terms of car sales, Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Jaguar and Volvo sold 80,915 vehicles, down from 89,484 last year (-9,6%).

Feast For Your Eyes: Italian Tuning Show Babes

“My Special Car Show” is an automotive customisation exhibition that took place at Rimini Fiera in Italy from 28 to 30 March, 2008. As with all tuning salons, there was no shortage of babes at “My Special Car Show”. Luckily for us, our fellow blogger-buddies at Autoblog.it were kind enough to capture many of the babes on film so we can get a taste of what we missed out on. Did we mention that there were a lot of poles at the exhibition centre in Rimini?

Kia KEE_wii Concept

While most of us thought that we had seen the last of the poorly received KEE Concept Coupe that made its debut in Frankfurt last year, Kia announced today the introduction of a unique development of its Peter Schreyer-designed sports coupe concept - the KEE_wii. The latest upgrade to KEE involves the addition of high-tech drive system that removes the need for a steering wheel and pedals

Franz Josef-Hicks, head of the Advanced Propulsion Research Institute and Laboratory at Kia Motors New Zealand, explained; ‘We have taken inspiration from current computer gaming technology to create a completely new steering and pedal system called Dynamic On-Road Kinetics. The traditional driving controls are replaced by a small ‘controller’ which fits comfortably into two hands. Making steering motions with the small controller will turn the car in whichever direction the driver likes whilst accelerator and brakes are button operated. It is a very simple and intuitive system.’ added Mr Josef-Hicks.

According to Carscoop sources, the KEE_wii dynamic control system will be available on new Kia cars on April 1 2009 and will then be optional on forthcoming generations of models as they are updated or replaced.