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Mustang EcoBoost owners rejoice; you get more power!

12 October, 2016

It must be hard being the younger brother to a stonking great big five-litre V8 engine that needs no forced induction to make its brutal power and torque. This is the life of an EcoBoost owner — but not for long, as Ford has announced a performance package for the four-cylinder turbo EcoBoost engine. 

After driving both the V8 model and the turbocharged model, we all agreed that the EcoBoost was great, but it wasn’t the V8, and it certainly didn’t make the same sort of power. The noise that the V8 makes at full noise is intoxicating, whereas the EcoBoost sounds like a modified vacuum cleaner. 

Nonetheless, Ford could sway us with a bit more power, and that’s now an option. With an engine calibration (re-flash perhaps?) and a cold-air intake, the EcoBoost will produce an extra 19kW and 94Nm of torque than the base model. That’s a lot more torque, and, with the cold-air intake, a lot more noise — although we’re not sure the wssssshy noise that it’ll make is a good thing. Peak power will be 250kW and peak torque will be up to a whopping 529Nm — that’s huge! 

With Ford in America releasing a price of $699 for this package, it’ll no doubt be around the $1000 mark here in New Zealand. The package will retain the factory Ford warranty if installed by a Ford Performance authorized dealer. 

Still, cool boost noises aside, the V8 still gets our vote. Which would you choose? Let us know in the comments below. 

Design accord

28 March, 2025

You can’t get much more of an art deco car than a Cord — so much so that new owners, Paul McCarthy and his wife, Sarah Selwood, went ahead and took their Beverly 812 to Napier’s Art Deco Festival this year, even though the festival itself had been cancelled.
“We took delivery of the vehicle 12 days before heading off to Napier. We still drove it all around at the festival,” says Paul.
The utterly distinctive chrome grille wrapping around the Cord’s famous coffin-shaped nose, and the pure, clean lines of the front wing wheel arches, thanks to its retractable headlamps, are the essence of deco. This model, the Beverly, has the finishing touch of the bustle boot that is missing from the Westchester saloon.

Motorman: When New Zealand built the Model T Ford

21 March, 2025

History has a way of surrounding us, hidden in plain sight. I was one of a group who had been working for years in an editorial office in Augustus Terrace in the Auckland city fringe suburb of Parnell who had no idea that motoring history had been made right around the corner. Our premises actually backed onto a century-old brick building in adjacent Fox Street that had seen the wonder of the age, brand-new Model T Fords, rolling out the front door seven decades earlier.
Today, the building is an award-winning two-level office building, comprehensively refurbished in 2012. Happily, 6 Fox Street honours its one time claim to motoring fame. Next door are eight upmarket loft apartments, also on the site where the Fords were completed. Elsewhere, at 89 Courtenay Place, Wellington, and Sophia Street, Timaru, semi-knocked-down Model Ts were also being put together, completing a motor vehicle that would later become known as the Car of the Century.