Category Archives: The Octane Lounge

Autonomous Ford Cars in five years
The Octane Lounge April 11, 2016

Octane_Lounge_FORD_AUTONOMOUSOverview

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Description

The topic of self-driving cars has been a hot one and Ford Motor Co. has upped the ante, announcing that it intends to have a high-volume, fully autonomous vehicle in commercial operation by 2021.
With the proclamation, Ford is the first major automaker to put a timetable to actually producing autonomous vehicles.
Ford intends its autonomous vehicle to be used in conjunction with ride-hailing or ride-sharing services.

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Ford Shelby GT350
The Octane Lounge April 4, 2016

OCTANE_LOUNGE_GT350Overview

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Description

When Ford rolled out the all-new 2015 Mustang, it was inevitable that the first extreme makeover of the iconic pony car was something of a tease.
Sure, the Mustang is available with a 435-horsepower V8 and what Ford calls the ‘Performance Package’ to optimize handling and braking. But you just knew that Ford wasn’t showing its full hand, and that the ultra-high-performance variants were still to come.

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California Dreamin’
The Octane Lounge March 28, 2016

Octane_Lounge_MONTEREYOverview

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Description

It’s the most wonderful time of the year for classic-car enthusiasts: the annual gathering of the rich and the ultra-rich in Northern California’s lush Monterey Peninsula.
Each year in mid-August, half a dozen auction houses sell some of the world’s most desirable collector cars. According to Hagerty.com, here are several most valuable cars expected to sell in Monterey during the auctions, which run from Aug. 17-21.

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AutoPilot irony
The Octane Lounge March 21, 2016

Octane_Lounge_AUTOPILOTOverview

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Description

By all accounts, 40-year-old Joshua Brown of Canton, Ohio, was bold, fearless and adventurous.
He was sometime who embraced technology and liked to push the limits. A former member of the United States Navy’s SEAL Team 6, he spent more than a decade in the military where his specialty was disarming explosive devices.
On May 7, Brown became the first person to die in a passenger car in Autopilot mode, when his Tesla Model S hit a tractor-trailer after he left a family outing at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla.

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Shelby Number One
The Octane Lounge March 14, 2016

Octane_Lounge_SUPER_SNAKEOverview

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Description

The late Carroll Shelby was a larger-than-life personality, an American icon and maverick who did everything from raise chickens and sell chili to defeat Enzo Ferrari in the French 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race. When Shelby’s personal 1966 Shelby Cobra Super Snake sold for $5.5 million at the 2007 Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale (Ariz.) Auction, five years prior to his death in 2012, the price sent shock waves through the collector-car community.

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Rick Hendrick’s NSX:01
The Octane Lounge March 7, 2016

Octane_Lounge_HENDRICKS_NSXOverview

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Description

For Rick Hendrick, being Number One matters a whole lot. As a race-team owner, Hendrick holds the record for NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championships with 11 and he has won the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series championship three times. On the automotive side, his Hendrick Automotive Group is the sixth-largest automotive dealer network in the United States with 2014 sales of more than 180,000 new vehicles and a workforce of more than 10,000 employees.

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Grudgement Day
The Octane Lounge Feb 29, 2016

Octane_Lounge_GT_WINOverview

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Description

Mission accomplished. Really. Mission accomplished.
Fifty years after stunning the motorsports world by defeating Enzo Ferrari’s fleet of bright red racers in the French 24 Hours of Le Mans, Ford Motor Co. has triumphed again. For this year’s running of the world’s most famous endurance race, Ford brought four of its all-new 2017 Ford GT supercars and they performed brilliantly on the big stage, finishing first, third, fourth and ninth in the highly competitive GTE Pro class. A non-factory Ferrari campaigned by an American team finished second.

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Google has a car
The Octane Lounge Feb 22, 2016

Octane_Lounge_GOOGLE_FCAOverview

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Description

One of the big mysteries of the race to develop self-driving cars has been who Silicon Valley tech company Google would partner with on the automotive side. Google previously has shown off a sort of generic-looking egg-shaped autonomous car, as well as some Lexus RX tall wagons that it was testing, but that was about it. But now Google has a new partner in Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. It’s a marriage that will begin integrating the all-new 2017 Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivan into Google Self-Driving Car Project.

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Your driving: Public Enemy No. 1
The Octane Lounge Feb 15, 2016

Octane_Lounge_RAGEOverview

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Description

There is no question that at this moment in time, automobiles and light trucks have reached their highest points in evolution and sophistication, with dramatic progress in safety and technology features just in the last few years alone. Whether your tastes run to muscle cars, hybrids, SUVs and sports cars, there’s pretty much something for everyone and whatever your something of choice is, it’s light years of what was available a generation ago.

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100 years of Indy pace cars
The Octane Lounge Feb 8, 2016

Octane_Lounge_INDYPACEOverview

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Description

The Indianapolis 500 remains the biggest one-day spectacle in auto racing, an event that stands above all others in its depth of history and tradition.
This year is a historic one at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, May 29, as it marks the 100th running of the 500. And to help celebrate the momentous event, track officials have lined up Roger Penske as the pace car driver.

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