Ford Sports Cars

Yes, that is right. The 2020 Ford Shelby GT500 will have 3D printed parts! The most expected muscle car of the decade will be partially 3D printed. Well, partially is a slightly too strong word here. It will get two 3D printed parts. However, this made me think about the 3D printing Ford has been screaming about for the last couple of years. It may very well be the biggest change in the world of mass production in ages.

On December 1st, 1913, Henry Ford started the first moving assembly line for the mass production of a car. History.com reports that “his innovation reduced the time it took to build a car from more than 12 hours to two hours and 30 minutes.”

Jump to today, and astounding news has emerged - “The 2020 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 Have 3D Printed Parts Brakes?”

I wonder, could this innovation be as industry shattering as the first production line was all that time ago? Of course, I am not the only one who thought about this.

"More than 100 years ago, Ford created the moving assembly line, forever changing how vehicles would be mass-produced," Joe Hinrichs, Ford’s President of Global Operations, said in a statement. "Today, we are reinventing tomorrow’s assembly line — tapping technologies once only dreamed of on the big screen — to increase our manufacturing efficiency and quality."

Ford is one of the hundreds (if not thousands) of companies that are working on perfecting the 3D printing process. It has been doing it from the very start (all the way back in the Eighties), but since sometime in early 2000s, it integrated the 3D printing process into its production affairs. The result is a disturbing fact - if by some magic, 3D printing at Ford stopped, the company would not be able to produce cars.

At all.

"We touch a significant portion of the vehicle with 3D printing now," said Harold Sears, Technical Expert of rapid manufacturing technologies with Ford’s manufacturing division. "We’re prototyping virtually everything [using 3D printing] from the road to roof."

So, what the hell does all of this have with the Shelby GT500?

These are some facts you have to know:

The highly anticipated new-generation Shelby GT500 will break cover on January 14, 2019. The news comes straight from Ford, which displayed a 1967 GT500 in a container at the Los Angeles Auto Show with "01.14.19" written on it.

In case you’ve ever wondered just how much power the current turbocharged Ford GT supercar puts out, this video by Hennessey Performance will answer that past the decimal point, right down into the hundredths.

Beechmont Ford Performance, an Ohio-based dealership, is in the news again. And, for good reason. Its claim-to-fame was selling 700-horsepower Mustang GTs for a mere $40,000. This time, the showroom is selling brand new Mustang GTs with a bottle of nitrous fitted in the boot. Can it get any crazier than this?

The Thunderbird lived its last days as a two-seater sports car in 1957 which is when Ford introduced the 312 5.1-liter V-8 engine. That’s how the E-Code Thunderbird was born, the beefiest of them all and the closest alternative to the Corvette that Ford ever offered.

Ford debuted the Thunderbird at the Detroit Auto Show in February of 1954 and quickly dubbed it "personal car" so as to suggest it wasn’t a direct answer to GM’s Corvette. What it was, in all fairness, was a luxury sports car tailor-made for the kind of people that were looking for a more refined 2-seater model than the Corvette.

The 1957 Thunderbird was the last which retained the original two-passenger layout before Ford decided that their clientele would much rather go for a 4-seater sports car with added amenities and weight. So, for 1957, Ford made the most powerful T-Bird ever by introducing the 5.1-liter V-8 engine, in a number of guises. The twin quad-barrel carburetor ones were distinguishable by the letter E in the car’s VIN code - the source of the ’E-Bird’ nickname.

Keep reading to learn more about the 1957 Ford Thunderbird E-Code

Imagine you’re one of the 138 owners of the Ford GT, the most technologically-advanced car ever built by Ford. Then the gearbox fails. You look for a replacement and dully pay the price of a Corolla in exchange for your broken one. You then tell your Mercedes-owning friend about it. He also had his identical gearbox changed on his AMG-GT, but he only paid half for it. How is this possible?

It’s not uncommon for unrelated manufacturers to share parts, those made by third-party companies. You may remember more striking examples like when Lamborghini borrowed the headlights for its Diablo 6.0 from the Nissan 300ZX or Venturi when it ripped the external rear-view mirrors from a generic Peugeot. This time around, we’re talking about two manufacturers, Mercedes-Benz and Ford, who use the same gearbox from Getrag.

Although the said transmission is virtually identical, even down to the gear ratios, the two companies resell the gearbox at different price rates. In fact, a version of the same Getrag unit but with altered ratios can also be found in two older Ferraris, the California and the 458, and the Italians too have a price of their own for this component.

One of the great things about car renderings is the ability to let your imagination go crazy. You can use an existing car model and re-imagine it without a roof, or you can get really creative and redesign it in a different body type altogether. There’s something to be said, then, for renderings that take two models from two different automakers and combine them to create an entirely new model. It’s the kind of Transformers-like job that we should be seeing more often in the real world. Or should we? The truth is, BudgetsDirect undertook this very exercise, and the results are all “interesting,” to say the least. As an added bonus, we’re doing our own part and renaming these creations in the best way we can.

The original Bullitt Mustang is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year and, while that’s going on, a brand-new sixth-generation Mustang with the Bullitt package headed for the emblematic Isle of Man to tackle the TT course. Yes, that idolized ribbon of road.

Held annually in May or June for over a century, the Isle of Man TT races, where TT stands for Tourist Trophy, are arguably the most dangerous races you can attend. Year in and year out, riders dabble on the edge of disaster and disaster does strike some of them. That’s because the TT is run on the B-roads that go around the picturesque Isle of Man.

The whole road course stretches over 37 miles and, along the way, you encounter hills, jumps, dips, houses, towns, just about everything you can imagine. There’s no room for error and, in spite of that, the current lap record translates to an astounding 135 mph average speed. Ford took a 2019 Mustang Bullitt to the island for its latest installment in the series that talks about Europe’s greatest driving roads.

Keep on reading to learn more about the way the Mustang Bullitt faired around the Isle of Man

Here’s the latest Superformance classic-looking Ford GT40. The American masters of continuation GT40s unveiled at the SEMA Show the Future GT Forty prototype which draws its inspiration from both the original 1960s GT40 Mk. and the modern, Le Mans-winning, V-6 Ecoboost-poweredFord GT GTLM race cars.

The South-African Superformance company has been building painstakingly accurate GT40 recreations for over a decade and a half. Their cars are officially licensed to use the GT40 name and even eligible for the GT40 register, which means the Blue Oval fully approves of these beasts.

This latest model, presented after an 18-months-long buildup in the MagnaFlow booth at the SEMA Show, features the same livery as the 2017 GTE-Pro Le Mans-winning Ford GT built by Multimatic and a host of aerodynamic and mechanical upgrades that increase the GT40s prowess around any race track.

Keep reading to learn more about the Superformance Future GT Forty

Yes, the Mustang will remain the only car the Blue Oval will offer on U.S. soil, but the legendary pony car might spawn a number of models, including a four-door coupe-style sedan that aims to match Audi’s A7 or Mercedes-Benz’s CLS Class.

We’ve heard just about anything that could’ve been heard about the upcoming Mustang-styled crossover. But during that same meeting with the dealers that Ford organized, the company threw in the mix some hints towards a potential Mustang sedan that could be outfitted with a turbocharged V-8 engine.

Keep reading to learn more about the rumored Mustang sedan.

The second-generation Ford GT was launched for the 2017 model year as a revival of the limited-edition supercar that the Blue Oval first produced between 2004 and 2006. The modern GT is also a tribute to the original GT40 from the 1960s and marked Ford’s return to endurance racing. Following a handful of special-edition model, Ford created the Carbon Series, a lightweight version of the standard GT.

Fitted with an extended range of carbon-fiber parts as standard, including wheels, the Carbon Series is nearly 40 pounds lighter than the regular GT. It also features extra carbon inside the cabin, as well as customized seats and a dashboard badge. Is it more powerful? No, but the fact that it’s lighter makes it a more nimble car on the race track.

Ford has brought the Series 1 Mustang RTR Powered by Ford Performance to the 2018 SEMA show, but unlike most other special Mustangs on display, it’s actually going to sell 500 examples come early 2019. Its creation is the collaborative effort of Ford Performance and RTR Vehicles, the company owned by world champion drifter Vaughn Gittin Jr. and is a mix of elements from both.

Can we believe what we’re seeing? We’ve barely gone past the news that an image of the 2020 Ford Mustang GT500 was leaked and now the GT500R too? It would be too good to be true.

Last week, we were unexpectedly hit with the news that the new GT500 based on the S550 Mustang has been sneakily photographed during a dealer presentation. It featured the same dual white stripe over blue livery as seen in Ford’s official overhead sneak peek shot, so we think that that is the real deal.

However, we’re not so sure about the GT500R, since we don’t even know if and, if yes when an R version will come for the GT500. We know the GT350 was offered in R form so it would seem natural that its big brother sees a similar treatment, but nothing’s been confirmed yet.

Ford’s plan for the “Mach 1” name is still shrouded in questions, but a new teaser from Ford seems to have left bread crumbs on what the automaker intends to do with the resurrected nomenclature. Without directly identifying it, the teaser included a shot of the original Ford Mustang Mach 1, followed by a shot of the current Mustang, an illuminated version of the Mustang’s V-8 engine, and a lit version of the muscle car’s iconic badge. Without explicitly saying anything, Ford may have hinted its plans to use the “Mach 1” name on a future hybrid Mustang.

The GT supercar seems to be a hit among enthusiasts. To satisfy the ‘overwhelming’ customer demand, Ford has announced that the production of the GT supercar will be extended by approximately two years. For people who would like to get it this time around, the Blue Oval will start taking applications in selected markets for about a month, starting from November 8.

If you love a thumping big V-8, tire-shredding RWD power, and all the attitude that goes with it, you’re spoiled for choice. Indeed, there’s no shortage of badass muscle cars out there these days, and now, it looks like Ford is getting in on the fun with a new Mustang Shelby GT500, as revealed in a recent Instagram post by user sinister_lifestyle.