The Dakar Rally is THE most famous rally in the world, and without doubt it is probably also one of the most dangerous. Us oldies will of course remember it as the Paris to Dakar, but due to security threats in Mauritania, which led to the cancellation of the 2008 rally, the 2009 Dakar Rally was run in South America and has been ever since. The race is open to amateur and professional entries. And strangely about eighty percent of the participants are amatuers, albeit rich ones!

The rally features 4 different types of vehicle, motocycles, quads, cars and trucks and a total of 21 people have died whilst competing during it’s history. Thankfully only one person died this year, motorcycle rider Jorge Andrés Boero sadly passed away before the end of the very first stage.

After some crazy driving over the last few weeks, the Rally has finally come to a close, with results as follows:

Cars

Stephane PETERHANSEL (FRA)
Joan (Nani) ROMA (ESP)
Giniel DE VILLIERS (ZAF)

Truck

Gerard DE ROOY (NLD)
Hans STACEY (NLD)
Artur ARDAVICHUS (KAZ)

Bike

DESPRES (FRA)
Marc COMA (ESP)
Helder RODRIGUES (PRT)

Quad

Alejandro PATRONELLI (ARG)
Marcos PATRONELLI (ARG)
Tomas MAFFEI (ARG)

A huge, crazy well done to all the winners, you can check out all the interviews and some great media over at the Red Bull Dakar Rally site.

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Today at the North American Industy Auto Show in Detroit, Ford have just launched the new 2013 Ford Fusion, which will also be the basis of the Ford Mondeo in Europe launched later this year.

The Ford Fusion follows on from Ford’s hard work over the last few years to make their cars much more accessible to the wider market, and by that we mean packed with the latest technology. As you can judge by the pictures, this also means a move to a much more agressive and sexier look.

Buyers will also be inundated with options: fuel, hybrid and plug-in hybrid powertrains will be available, each of them expecting to go top of the class for fuel economy and emmissions. Expect all of the latest technology that we have seen on the updated Focus and C-Max overthe past year to be included and of course the Lane Keeping System, Adaptive cruise control, Active park assist, Blind Spot Information System (BLIS®), Sync and the new improved MyFord Touch.

We are updating all the time and will bring more details soon, but potential Car of Year? We think so…

(we will continue to update during the day)

Now music videos are ten a penny, even music videos with hot women are pretty much the norm. Between them and Llamas with hats or a sneezing baby panda, it’s the only reason most of us scour YouTube. Well the blonde and long legged lovely that is Pixie Lott is next up with her new video ‘What Do You Take Me For’ and it’s a different, here’s why.

Let’s start with the song title, ‘What Do You Take Me For’, well judging by the blatant product placement in her latest video, we take her for … a money grabbing sell-out… Harsh? Probably? Fair? We think so!

Now don’t get us wrong, we are a big fan of the new range from Citroen, the DS3 racing is eye catching, sporty and a desirable car at a reasonable price for the under 30′s and the new DS4 is such a sexy looking car I get aroused when I see the adverts on TV. But never before have we seen such pushy product placement in a music video before, well at least not a product that isn’t the artists own. Nowe we know it isn’t in the whole thing, and main start and end sequences will probably be cut from music channels. But with nearly 3 million views on YouTube already, it’s not to shabby for Citreon.

Take a look and let us know what you think about the below. Like we said, we love Citroen, Pixie looks hot and has killer legs. We just don’t really want a brand shoved in our face…

It was the perfect way to end the summer: a trip to Paris, a rally through France over in to Germany, and a day at the internationally acclaimed Frankfurt Motor Show. Who could turn down an invitation like that?! Well, amongst the team here, there was only one of us available to go, and that was yours truly, another benefit to being single and willing to do anything!

After an unimaginable 7am start on a Saturday, the journey began to Paris. Living in London is full of perks, one of which is the Eurostar, which got me to my destination in no time at all. I was greeted at the train station by a Ford driver in one of the new Focuses, to take myself another blogger to the lovely hotel in the heart of Paris. We were there early and had a few hours to spare, so myself and my new found friend Marce, headed down the Champs Elysee for a few drinks in the sunshine. After a few we headed back to prepare for our evening’s briefing on what the next few days will hold. Of course, up to this point, we had precious little info to go on, safe that there would be some sort of rally…

That evening it was announced that there should have been 4 representatives from each of the different Ford markets total 24 different bloggers, including the UK, Spain, Italy, France, Germany and Russia. We would be put into pairs and would share the driving of a brand new 2011 Ford Focus Wagon Titanium edition. We would be rallying from Paris to Frankfurt, with numerous stages, although this would not be your conventional A-to-B rally based on times. Instead, we would be challenged across the legs of the journey, requiring us to tap into our social networks to find locations and answers along our routes. Along the way we would get to stop off at the Ford factory in Saarlouis as well as meet people involved in the production of the car we were driving as well as on the Ford Evos concept that we have previously featured.

I was paired up with a UK writer Cate, and her diligent photographer Ian. After a lovely 3 course dinner and a good night’s sleep, we were up at the crack of dawn to get driving. One tricky part in all of this was that there was no satnav in the car – just a map book! It was also revealed at this point that Cate was not capable of driving a manual (stick shift), and so yours truly was tasked with the entirety of the driving whilst Cate took on the navigation duties. I am a Ford Focus owner, and so having the chance to drive the latest model was a welcome change, as was driving on the wrong side of the road, apologies, the right hand side of the road. In fact, this was the first time on the right for me, so was quite nervous given the 600km drive ahead!

The first leg, from Paris to Reims, began early and our car was the last to leave the garage as Ian set up his cameras. Along the way we were set 3 challenges, which were shared with us by Scott, Head of Social Media for Ford. Ingeniously, you could just plug the USB key we were handed into the port in the glove box and it could be played directly through the stereo system. These involved stopping off along the way in Brie-de-Meaux to purchase the ‘king of cheeses’, an eponymous souvenier, find a statue to photograph and also a specific window in the Cathedrale de Notre Dame de Reims. Whilst these seem fairly easy, remember we have a lunch to catch, no satnav and we are travelling the whole time with limited data usage on wifi dongles… Oh, and of course we left 30 minutes after everyone else as well. I’m not here to make excuses, but after getting horrendously lost trying to escape Paris, finding somewhere to buy cheese in Meaux and finding the restaurant, we managed to complete only 2 of these challenges. In spite of this, we were third to the restaurant, although the car had already begun to smell like cheese.

After a hearty lunch we set off to Mets on the French border with Germany. Whilst the journey itself wasn’t to have any challenges, we were asked to snap 3 photos we felt represented a theme Ford brand themselves with, including tech, green and saftey. We were also told that our cars were measuring how economically we were driving and a rating for this would be assessed, the top 3 getting points. After a quick investigation, we determined our fuel economy was already the worst amongst the drivers, and with little hope of salvaging this without getting out and pushing the car the next 200km. We took a team decision to throw caution to the wind and give the car a bit of a test, to push it to the max and test out some of its new features.

We set off last, again, and once we hit the open roads we opened up the engine. The car felt comfortable to drive at its top speed, and although only having to contend with minor bends in the road, the car hugged the ground quite well in most instances and felt very safe. Whilst travelling we gave the lane drifting feature the test, and if anything, it proved quite annoyingly useful, vibrating away when I was veering lanes. Of course, if you like to change lanes without indicating (naughty!) then this will obviously irritate you. If you change the intervention setting it’ll even steer you back in to the lane, which is awkwardly uncomfortable as it fights your control. We made it to Mets first – a stunning turn of events and a testament to my driving. Of course, it could be people had been taking it easy given the challenge. Once there we were set a parallel parking challenge, a test of our abilities and then the chance to road test the autopark function.

Every car nominated a driver and we took turns to get it in to the space set between two of the Focuses. Yours truly was up first, and I must admit I set the bar quite high – my front tyre approximately 10cm away from the kerb and a time exactly 2 seconds slower than the autopark. Proud of this, I stood by to watch the remaining participants, and although unsure of my result at the start, my confidence grew as each person took their turns. Some were slow, some were quick, some were very far out from the kerb and some crashed. I finished the champion, but sadly this garnered no points for the team, only deductions – so we had the least deducted from what we could only assume were already low points. You can check out everyone giving it a go compared to the auto park feature on this youtube playlist

The following day saw us drive straight to the Saarlouis Ford factory, which has been open for over 40 years. Having been round car production plants before I was looking forward to making comparisons between factories across companies and geographies. However this could only be achieved after we got to the factory, a 90 minute journey that took easily double. Unfortunately, and without pointing any fingers (Cate), we got lost numerous times and missed the bodyshop of the factory tour. However me made it in time to go down the production line and watch the cars being assembled, as well as getting the chance to enjoy a lunch in the factory canteen. Following this it was just a simple straight forward drive to Frankfurt for the motor show. Again, leaving last, we managed to make it there second… So you can say what you want about our abilities to complete challenges, had this been you classic rally we would have won.

So what did we learn? I hate to bring up the old stereotype, but some women cannot read maps for love nor money. That the new Focus is a fun little drive, is good value for its price range, and comes with a good few little extras if you pay for them, and that it is capable of getting the needle to the top of its dial. That I drive incredibly quickly and that I’m more accurate and about as fast as a machine when it comes to parallel parking – take that technology!

Thanks to all those that took part, and if you don’t believe me about the Focus, you can read Joe’s, from when he done the first UK drive.

At the Frankfurt Motorshow, Ford unveiled their Evos concept car. As we all know, concept cars don’t get factory produced, but their features are an indication as to the direction of that car company, a road map or a DNA if you will. In fact, we were informed to watch out from the next 4 months for some Evos features appearing in production cars. Whilst a lot can be said about the design and specific aspects of the Evos, it could well be the technological concepts that stand this concept apart.

Firstly, idea of being permanently connected to the cloud. Over the past year cloud computing has become a real buzz phrase across all industries heavily affected by technology, so its not surprising that its being bandied about in the automotive sphere. Now this isn’t exactly what I’d call a new idea by any means, but using the cloud to check on the driver’s profile, diary plans, and route, coupled with weather, traffic conditions and driver’s health to subsequently affect the determined route, chassis, drive settings and responsiveness of the car are all interesting ideas (did you get all that??). In fact, it opens the door to an awful lot more possibilities to make driving more comfortable and easier. Paul Mascarenas believes that the technology is there already – its integrating and implementing it that’s delaying it. And although this may be true to an extent, whilst we still struggle to get phone reception around the UK, I might sit on the fence a little bit. Unless Ford have developed some new magic 3G fairies…

Although some might consider that to be invasive and a long way off, it is certainly within the realms of possibility. What is definitely on the horizon is the oncoming Sync technology developed by Microsoft, who bring their software knowledge and understanding to the table to enhance the entertainment and control features of the onboard computing inside Ford cars. This seemingly will be somewhat limited in its first phase of implementation, and will mostly just turn the car into a wifi hotspot. Upon further questioning, this is only if the car itself can connect to another internet source, such as your smartphone or a dongle. So I think that this will be quite a limited function, although the ability to introduce an app store and update firmware remotely sounds like a dynamite idea and if the EU offering can match up with the US it’ll begin to take off. I used to use Pandora when it was available outside of the States, which is incorporated into the Sync. Now I use Spotify, and as a premium user, I’d hope to use that in the car as well.

Whilst this is all good news, the development of MyKey could prove divisive. This technology, already debuted in the US, allows parents to have a degree of control over how fast the car travels – with warnings to the young driver. It even is capable of muting the audio unless the seatbelt is plugged in. Whilst the younger driver is likely to put the developer’s face on their dart board (do kids play darts anymore?), the parents will be much happier, and are even likelier to get a slightly lower insurance cost.

Other technology Ford had to display and discuss were the features we got used to in the Ford Focus we had driven across from Paris. This included Active City Stop, Active Park Assist, Lane Keeping Aid & Departure Warning, Adaptive Cruise Control and Driver Alert. Active city stop monitors the road in front of you if you are travelling under 30kmph, and actively breaks the car for you to prevent or minimise collision – ideal if you’ve looked the wrong way and not realised, or the person you thought was moving simply hasn’t whilst you glance the other way. Active Park Assist is the automatic parallel parking feature that’s in the new Focus advert – where the car recognises spaces you can fit in and does the indicating and steering for you, all you have to do is start and stop. You can view our video of it below, from the first UK test drive.

Driver alert monitors your driving and responsiveness, and tells you if it thinks you’re tired and should stop for a coffee or rest. It also is capable of measuring your driving style over the journey and rates how economically you’ve performed – giving you green petals on a flower as well as an overall ranking, such as “Eco Champion”. To be honest, as wonderfully helpful as some of this is, it doesn’t half sound like they’ve managed to develop a nagging wife of a system to accompany you everywhere to tell you that your drifting lanes, that you need a coffee, that your speeding, and so on and so forth.

The stand at the show was large enough to have its own testing track to give some of these a go, including the Active City Stop, where you are encouraged to drive at a steady speed towards a lowered reflective barrier. Nerve wracking stuff, but it certainly is a good way to demonstrate the actual benefit this brings to city driving and what it can do to help eliminate all those accidents the absent minded driver can cause.

They tell us that this isn’t to replace the driver, or that we still need to concentrate, but we can’t help feeling, with all this tech, our job is getting easier and easier…

There is also a little more fun to be had than just simply seeing the sort of tech on offer. Ford’s WRC team are well known, and they’ve tried to bring a bit of that magic to the motorshow through their rally track simulator. You strap yourself in and have a real go around a short course, with scores being recorded and put on a leader board – Top Gear style.

A good lot of tech on show here and a promising future for cars moving forwards, not just for Ford but for the whole automotive industry if they all take a hint from one-another.

Cars, women, cars and women: this was heaven. The Frankfurt Motor Show is considered one of the best in the world, and 2011 has proven to be one of its biggest and best yet. There are so many companies on display with stands ranging from small areas with 2 or 3 cars, all the way up to entire halls and custom built arenas showcasing over 50 cars, its almost impossible to get round it all in a day. In fact, I’d say it is impossible!

Of course, we were there on the opening day, and have done as much of the hard work for you as humanly possible. With all these press releases and other articles, so much has been said about the cars and their stock photos. However we wanted to snap as many in their mechanical flesh as possible, and as many of the beautiful women that accompanied them.

In all honesty, there were so many women and cars, it was hard to know where to look most of the time. However, I would say that our picture gallery from the first day can give you a good idea of what was on our minds, and probably what will be on yours. Cars? Women? Cars and women? That do anything for you? Look below!

We like our design, we like our cool cars, we like anything with class. We might well like the new Audi Urban Concept car then…

To be honest, we are not really sure where this sits, which is probably why it is, and only ever will be a concept. It’s a little electric city car in one corner, powered by electric of course and weighing just 480 kilograms, but it also has a hint of racer / Ariel Atom in there as well…

As a 1+1, we see this a mix of motorcar and motorscooter, a wild concept that won’t be seen for some time, or even any of the features. Entry is gained by sliding doors, not gull wings some places are reporting, that feature was ditched early on. Instead the whole door / canopy slides back and you ‘step over’ the sides. This looks very cool, but Audi can take my one legged nan of their mailing list, as she ain’t gonna get in!

This does add to the look though, and not only that, allows for a sneaky drop-top if we are looking at it right!

We are on the fence when it comes to this little city wonder, but it’s sheer looks made it worth the inclusion alone. We need to be careful, we don’t want to turn into an auto blog, but we will be at the Frankfurt motor show this week. So bare with us whilst we take you on a short trip of amazing cars, girls and general beauty!

Ford are hardly know for their sexy cars. Yes they are gradually improving their design but we still think ‘safe, family hatch’. Well they are hoping that the new EVOS Concept might well change all that.

Due to be unveiled at the the 2011 Frankfurt Motor Show, the first striking part are the spectacular hinged gullwing-style doors, all four of them, as this is a four door! From the front, you can immediately see a hint of Aston Martin, with that high, deep grill. Flip round to the side profile and you get a splash of Lamborghini . The back is all new, with a futuristic look, straight out of the Jetsons. All in all a pretty dam good looking motor!

On the inside it’s all about the technology. Cloud technology will be a big feature in the future. For instance automatically playing the same music TV program that was just streaming at home, or perhaps switching off the house lights automatically as it pulls away. Creating the ultimate personal and lifestyle car. Well when it’s connected through 3G anyway… If you look at the actually design, we don’t feel it is too ‘out there’. A curvy cabin which looks very cool, it wouldn’t look out of place in the new vehicles of Ford right now.

Power ‘would’ come from a lithium-ion plug-in hybrid (PHEV) powertrain providing the same next-generation performance and fuel economy as the Ford C-MAX Energi due to be released next year. Ford ‘powersplit’ hybrid architecture allows the electric motor and petrol engine to work together or separately to maximise efficiency.

We know we will never see this car anywhere near production, but we can only hope that it does influence the Ford designers of the future. Though, remember guys, just because you build cars for families, doesn’t mean everything you design needs to have 4 doors…

Now you all know we love Ken Block, cars, women, and pretty much anything crazy. Well all of the aforementioned are featured in the latest video, as the Gymkhana World Tour reaches Vienna in Austria!

The first thing that strikes us is the sheer amount of people that turned out to watch Ken in action, not only that but just how closes Ken gets to them in his Ford Fiesta! Over 25,000 turned out for the very first stop of the tour which also includes Masters of Dirt freestyle motocross crew, including Blake “Bilko” Williams and Adam Jones. And of course a plethora of hot women (1:57 in the video!).

“Ever since we filmed the first Gymkhana video, I have wanted to be able to bring this type of action to a place where people can watch it live, and Gymkhana World Tour does exactly that,”

said Block.

“I’m super stoked on the staggering turnout we had in Austria. It was just amazing to have such an enormous crowd be able to witness the hooning so close, and to see everyone enjoy it so much.”

The tour has three main legs and will head to Los Angeles, California, on Saturday, July 23rd, followed by the final stop in Melbourne, Australia, on Saturday, September 3rd.

The 5am alarm was not a welcome wake up, but an early flight from Heathrow to Helsinki was worth getting up for. We were heading across to Finland, and locally to Jyvaskyla as guests of Ford to cover the Finnish leg of the Word Rally Championship.

In recent years rallying seems to have fallen off the radar within UK shores. The unfortunate death of Colin McRae in a helicopter crash back in 2007 and the retirement of Richard Burns meant no longer did we have homegrown talent on top of the world to cheer on and watch on our screens. Even so, it’s still a huge sport around the globe and there is no doubting these guys are some of the most talented, skilful and steely balled guys in the world of motor racing.

You may be surprised to hear Ford no longer use their family hatch (the all conquering Escort, and then the Focus), and the current WRC is the Fiesta, but speeds of upto 150 mph over loose surfaces with cliff edges to one side and immovable trees to the other, and a standing start to 60 mph in around 4 seconds, no matter on tarmac, gravel or sand leaves us in no doubt how quick these little pocket rockets are! In fact they put most supercars, even hypercars to shame.

The current Ford Abu Dhabi World Rally Team consists of;

Before the rally, both Jari-Matti and Mikka were tipped to take the win. The Finnish rally is notoriously known as one of the most difficult to win, with only 3 drivers from outside of Finland having won the rally in the past. In fact, when Sebastian Leob won the rally here in 2008 he said he had pushed the car and himself harder than he had ever done before, and no matter how good the win was, he would never push himself that close to the limit again. And that was coming from one of the most successful rally drivers of all time!! The unique ‘thrill’ of powering over a crest at full throttle on a blind turn and making sure you know 100% how the car will land and react is just a skill not many people possess.

As it turned out, Mikka Hirvonen had a nightmare first day, a problem with his suspension putting him over a minute down after the first stage. Excluding the three Thursday stages, Hirvonen was the quickest man in Finland, but alas, this is a marathon, not a sprint. For the last few years, that Frenchman, Sebastian Loeb, has proved to be the quickest and most consistent over his rivals, and so far this year it has been no different. And it turned out to be the same in Finland. Jari-Matti Latvala put up a spirited fight on the final afternoon, but it was just too little too late to stop Loeb from taking the points.

As for the British contingent, Kris Meeke and his Mini WRC retired as expected. As their testing year it’s been a difficult one. Good speed in some areas but a lack of power and overheating has seen them well behind the likes of Ford. Brit young guns Matthew Wilson and Scott Martin of Ford M-Sport Stobard came in 8th. Not quite the top 6 I tipped them for before the weekend, but a pretty good shout and a great top 10 finish. We will be catching up with the lads in an exclusive interview with AJB to ask them about the future of British Rallying. Keep an eye out in the next few weeks.

For those that have never been to a rally it is a unique experience. Miles and miles of woodland and random terrain mean you can be sitting on your own for hours without seeing a single person, yet be just metres from the track and the world’s very best whizzing past. Equally if you want to be in a known spot, like the ‘Jump’ on stage 14, expect around a thousand people to be crammed peering through trees to get a glimpse of their favourite driver getting air and a potential bad landing or crash.

As you hear the cars and the sound of their exhausts / engines tunnelling through the trees, the suspense of what car and who coming over the brow of the hill is a buzz in itself. But blink and you will miss them, for at any one time you are only ever going to see a single car for a maximum of 10 seconds on even the longest of straights / sections. After that they are nothing but a distant memory, but within 120 seconds you will see the next one blast past.

Rally Finland was a huge success, the people, the crowds, the teams and most of all, the fans. Although we are still not sure about WRC as a spectator sport, and the FIA really need to look at how they can improve Rally days with the likes of live web streaming and things during the events. But we do suggest going to one before you get too old. Rally GB may be cold at the end of the year, but we are pretty sure we will go, and so you should to.

A huge thanks to FordUK and FordWRC for being the ultimate hosts this weekend and supporting us with pretty much anything we needed.