The Ford Motor Company would like you to please turn the page. There’s nothing for American readers here, just some funny business from Australia that doesn’t concern you. Please go about your regularly scheduled Taurus leases and forget everything you’ve seen.

Still reading? Okay, but you’re risking total disgust with the current crop of domestic Ford sedans. For American mid-size buyers, Ford excretes the tired, charm-free front-drive Taurus with a Tupperware interior and floppy handling. Read the rest of this entry »

Like the Bonneville Salt Flats, One Lap of America is a speed-freak playground for aftermarket engineering. Sure, there are always a few cars that could be perceived as factory-supported, although sometimes this perception requires some squinting. We exclude press-fleet cars, such as the

C/D BMW M5, from this reckoning, but that still left several neo-works rides in the 2006 field: a Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8, co-driven by Erich Heuschele and Dave Zelkowski, both DaimlerChrysler engineers; a Ford Shelby GT500, shared by Bill Woebkenberg, a Ford SVT engineer, and Kip Ewing; a supercharged Honda Civic Si, co-driven by a pair of Honda engineers. Read the rest of this entry »