Tag: horse

Read This: Project Ugly Horse alive and kicking at Road & Track

Filed under: Classics, Coupe, Budget, Performance, Ford, Read This

project ugly horse ford mustang zach bowman road & track

The hallways of the Autoblog campus are much quieter now that Zach Bowman has taken his prose, along with his welders, wrenches and hammers, over to the digital pages of Road & Track, but that doesn’t mean our favorite project Mustang is gone forever. Project Ugly Horse is still coming along, and Zach has gifted us another update on his unfoxy Fox Body.

Last we saw of the Ugly Horse, Zach was strengthening up the ’89 Mustang’s chassis as he prepares to stuff the turbocharged, direct-injected EcoBoost engine of a Ford Focus ST under the hood. First things first, the old mill must go. Head on over to Road & Track to catch the latest chapter of Project Ugly Horse.

Project Ugly Horse alive and kicking at Road & Track originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 29 Aug 2013 19:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Project Ugly Horse: Part IX

Filed under: Aftermarket, Budget, Performance, Hatchback, Ford, Humor

One Step at a Time

Subframe Connector Install

Nearly every flavor of exotic driveline has been shoved into the ubiquitous Ford at some point or another.

Chuck Schwynoch had been patiently listening to my ramblings on the other end of the phone for a solid half hour. I’m not too big of a man to know when to ask for help, and at this point, I desperately needed some assistance. The truth is, working on a machine like a Fox Body Mustang is as easy as breathing thanks to the wealth of information available on the web. Nearly every flavor of exotic driveline has been shoved into the ubiquitous Ford at some point or another, and odds are the sorry souls behind those builds shared the highs and lows of their torment with the internet community.

That is, unless you’re trying to drop an EcoBoost 2.0-liter four-cylinder behind the clouded headlights of an ’89. Then you’re kind of on your own.

As the CEO of Maximum Motorsports, Schwynoch knows a thing or two about making old ponies fast around a road course. He and his team run an active research and development program committed to squeezing precious seconds from track-built Mustangs, and I was hoping that if anyone could help me navigate the vagaries of planting my modern engine into my old Fox, it was him. The fact that he had neither laughed me off nor hung up entirely seemed promising.

Project Ugly Horse is an ongoing series. Need to catch up? You can read all of the previous posts here.

Continue reading Project Ugly Horse: Part IX

Project Ugly Horse: Part IX originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 20 Jun 2013 11:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MTM launches its 472-horse Audi TT RS with a 194 mph run at Nardo

Filed under: Aftermarket, Coupe, Performance, Audi


MTM Audi TT RS – Click above for high-res image gallery

You’d be forgiven for believe the Audi TT RS is fast enough. By most accounts it is, packing a 340 horsepower, turbocharged inline five, it’s good for a four-and-a-half-second sprint to sixty and a 174 mph top speed. But if you’re going after the triple-century metric mark (close to 200 mph), you’re going to need a little something extra.

So says MTM. And they ought to know. The German tuning house has a history of taking Audis to the V-max and beyond, having brought an RS6 Avant to 344.2 km/h in 2009, a radical twin-engine TT to 393.6 in 2007 and a Bentley to 331 in 2008.

In an effort to take the TT RS past the 300 mark without the need for breaching the 500 hp mark, MTM tweaked the ECU, modified the turbo spools and fitted a new exhaust system – along with new wheels, tires and brakes. The result of the engine mods was 472 hp, enough to get its customized TT RS up to a GPS-certified top speed of 312 km/h (just under 194 mph) at Italy’s Nardo test track. And they’ll sell you the modifications too, for a price: €14,500 for the engine mods and another €9,973 for the suspension and wheel work, taxes and installation included.

Having proven their point about power:speed ratios, MTM’s also working on a 500+hp version. We can hardly wait to see what they’ll manage with that one, but for now you can check out the images in the gallery below and the details in the press release after the jump.

Gallery: MTM Audi TT RS 20th Anniversary

[Source: MTM]

Continue reading MTM launches its 472-horse Audi TT RS with a 194 mph run at Nardo

MTM launches its 472-horse Audi TT RS with a 194 mph run at Nardo originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 05 Oct 2010 18:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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GM launches new low-cost brand in China and it’s a ‘treasured horse’

Filed under: Budget, China, GM

While the German automakers – and Buick – mop up outrageous demand for their wares in China’s major metropolitan and coastal cities, General Motors wants to be the nameplate of choice in the secondary cities and the interior. And now in conjunction with its joint-venture partners SAIC and Wuling, it has launched another nameplate: Baojun. Meaning “treasured horse,” Baojun is the low-cost brand that will sell passenger cars built in China for priced in the area of $7,000.

The Baojun’s sales network will be built after the car is launched, but GM hasn’t let slip when that will be. The aims are lofty for the small runabout tasked with opening up another market segment, with the general manager of SAIC-GM-Wuling declaring, “We aim to surpass customer expectations by creating a brand that combines world-class quality with low ownership costs.” Follow the jump for the press release on the venture.

[Source: General Motors]

Continue reading GM launches new low-cost brand in China and it’s a ‘treasured horse’

GM launches new low-cost brand in China and it’s a ‘treasured horse’ originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 19 Jul 2010 14:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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