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Ecoboost turbo powered Ford S-Max MPV and facelifted Mondeo Titanium launching in Malaysia very soon!

Ford has announced that the Ecoboost engine will make its debut in Malaysia by mid year 2011. Since we’ve just entered into June, the launch should be just around the corner! The two vehicles that will be powered by this new generation turbo engine are the S-Max MPV and the facelifted Mondeo sedan, which will come in top Titanium spec.

Like the modern petrol engines found in other Continental makes such as Volkswagen and Peugeot, Ford’s Ecoboost engines combine a (single) turbocharger with direct fuel injection for better power, torque and fuel economy. It also features Ti-VCT (Twin Independent Variable Camshaft Timing). Compared to non Ecoboost engines, fuel efficiency is improved by up to 20%, while emissions are down by 15%.

The version that will debut in the Mondeo and S-Max is a 2.0-litre four-cylinder unit. It’s likely to have 203 PS and 300 Nm of torque, if we get what Singapore gets. Partnering it will be Ford’s wet clutch 6-speed Powershift transmission, which is a dual-clutch gearbox also found in the Focus TDCI.

Launched here in late 2009, the Mondeo is a D-segment sedan (hatchback not available here) that’s an alternative to Japanese favourites such as the Camry, Accord and Teana. The refreshed car features a new front end and a much longer equipment list.

Meanwhile, platform-mate S-Max is a sporty looking MPV with three rows of seats (second and third rows fold flat into the floor) that’s about the size of a Mitsubishi Grandis. Launched in 2006 as the first Ford to feature Kinetic Design, it was facelifted last year.

We’ve driven both the current 2.3L Duratec powered Mondeo AND the facelifted Mondeo Titanium with Ecoboost. Click here for the review of the current car and here for a preview of the upcoming car. You can also check out Ford’s new microsite for Ecoboost at www.ecoboost.com.my.

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2011 Ford Fiesta introduced in China

Two years after the Ford Fiesta made its debut in China, Changan Ford has launched the upgraded 2011 Fiesta, with changes including a more refined interior, additional tech/features and new colours, as well as a new name – the sedan variant now comes with a ‘Fengchao’ suffix. Meanwhile, the hatchback in Sport+ form also joins the lineup.

Added to the exterior shade palette are two vivid new colours, called Blush and Colorado Red, and changes to the interior include the inclusion of a USB port and rear speakers to model variants, a sunroof option as well as new trim colours combinations – there’s a choice of different coloured centre console covers, as the photo suggests.

The new Fiesta Sport+ hatchback joins the range in China, which is now made up of 10 variant models in sedan and hatch form, wearing a Mazda-derived 1.5 litre Duratec engine and automatic transmission.

The car comes with an exclusive coffee-coloured interior, and features redesigned 16-inch aluminum alloy wheels, a leather-covered steering wheel and projector headlamps, among others things.

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Ford develops heart rate monitoring car seat

Ford has come up with a prototype vehicle seat that can monitor a driver’s heart activity, a device that could one day reduce the number of accidents and fatalities that occur as a result of motorists having heart attacks behind the wheel.

A joint development between Ford’s European Research Centre in Aachen, Germany, and Aachen University’s Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule, which developed the contactless ECG technology, the prototype seat utilises ECG (electrocardiograph) technology that monitors the heart’s electrical impulses and detects signs of irregularity, working very much like an early warning system.

Whereas a normal ECG machine in a clinic requires metal electrodes to be attached to the skin at various points on the body, the Ford ECG seat has six built-in sensors that can detect heart activity through the driver’s clothing. Specially designed capacitive electrodes feed the body’s electrical heart impulses through complicated electronics to make the heart monitoring possible.

The system will be able to detect if someone is having a cardiovascular issue, for example a heart attack, and could also be used to detect the symptoms of other conditions such as high blood pressure or electrolyte imbalances.

In early tests, the Ford heart monitoring seat has recorded accurate readings during 98% of driving time for 95% of drivers. Ford’s research engineers are continuing to study how sensors can be made to record signals through a greater number of materials, including those that interrupt readings with their own electrical activity.

The company is also testing the prototype seat to understand how it could work with other advanced systems within Ford vehicles to warn a driver to pull over and seek medical attention, or possibly even send out an alert to emergency medical workers, if necessary.


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The mobile phone could play a key role as an interface for any future application of the technology. Connected to a system such as Ford SYNC with MyFord Touch, the Ford heart rate monitoring seat potentially could use the driver’s mobile phone to send a message to medical centres, alerting doctors to irregular heart activity. The seat could also be linked to SYNC’s Emergency Assistance function to inform emergency response teams of the driver’s heart condition before, during and after an accident.

Ford is exploring how advanced safety technologies such as Lane Departure Warning with Lane Keeping Aid, Active City Stop and Speed Limiter could work together with the heart rate monitoring seat to help protect drivers in cases where they experience heart problems.

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Ford and Google to work on making a “smarter” car

Ford is teaming up with Google in its efforts to further advance ongoing research in predicting driver behaviour, with the aim of helping to optimise vehicle control systems and improve vehicle performance attributes such as fuel or hybrid-electric efficiency.

The blue oval has already been actively carrying out predictive driver behavior research and analysis on its own, but the utilisation of Google’s Prediction API will provide greater computation power, information storage and external data through cloud computing, which will convert historical driving data – the where and when you drive – into useful real-time predictors, such as where a driver is headed at the time of departure.

Ford is looking at this to empower vehicles to offer drivers smart guidance based on learned behaviors and a variety of captured data, and make tomorrow’s vehicles smart enough to independently change how they perform to deliver optimal driveability and fuel efficiency. The company is hoping to use these types of cloud-stored data to enable a vehicle essentially to optimise itself and perform in the best manner determined by a predicted route.

Here’s how it works in a theoretical scenario. After a vehicle owner opts in to use the service, an encrypted driver data usage profile is built based on routes and time of travel. In essence, the system learns key information about how the driver is using the vehicle.

Upon starting the vehicle, Google Prediction will use historical driving behavior to evaluate given the current time of day and location to develop a prediction of the most likely destination and how to optimise driving performance to and from that location. For example, if the driver is heading to work, an optimised powertrain control strategy would be created for the trip.

A predicted route of travel could include an area restricted to electric-only driving, if the vehicle is a hybrid or EV. Therefore, the vehicle could program itself to optimise energy usage over the total distance of the route in order to preserve enough battery power to switch to all-electric mode when traveling within the EV-only zone.

Because of the large amount of computing power necessary to make the predictions and optimisation, an off-board system that connects through the cloud is currently necessary. In any case, it still looks like it’ll be some time before it makes its way into production vehicles.

The company already offers cloud-based services through Ford SYNC, but those services thus far have only been used for infotainment, navigation and real-time traffic purposes to empower the driver. Work is now underway to study the feasibility of incorporating other variables such as driver style and habits into the optimisation process, so vehicle control systems can be optimised further, allowing car and driver to work together for best efficiency.

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Ford Mondeo facelift and Ford S-MAX MPV at SDAC

SDAC must be gearing up for the launch of both the Ford Mondeo and the Ford S-MAX as both were spotted by reader Desmond Choe at the SDAC headquarters in PJ two days ago. There were some test drives going on. Some readers also alerted us of this activity via our Facebook Fan Page (joined yet?).

The Mondeo is the new facelifted model that we managed to have a short go in awhile back, this time in white instead of black. The S-MAX you see here is an MPV built on the EUCD Mondeo platform, which makes it a larger vehicle than the Focus-based C-MAX and the Fiesta-based B-MAX.

Look after the jump for a complete gallery of the two vehicles.
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Indian market Ford Fiesta Sedan 1.6L TDCi with 203 Nm!

Ford launched the new Fiesta in India last month, and at the same time renamed the car it replaced as Fiesta Classic, which is cheaper than the new car. However, unlike us in ASEAN, the Indian market gets only the sedan version without the sporty five-door hatchback. The Fiesta is the first of eight global models Ford will be bringing to the fast growing market by 2015.

There are two engine options in India, the 1.6-litre Ti-VCT petrol engine with 120 PS or a 1.6-litre TDCI engine, an option we don’t have here in Malaysia. The diesel puts out 90 PS and 203 Nm of torque, which is about 30 horses less, but 51 Nm more than the petrol unit. The latter will certainly be felt more in urban traffic. No Powershift; both engines work with a five-speed manual.

Both powerplants are better than those in the Fiesta Classic, in line with Ford’s positioning. The older car makes do with a 101 PS 1.6 Duratec petrol and a 68 PS/160 Nm 1.4L diesel unit.

Aimed at the Honda City, the Chennai made Fiesta comes well equipped with Voice Control and all the kit our 1.6 Sport has. However, the Indian car adds on cruise control with buttons on the right steering spoke.

The instruments are identical, but they’re lit up in a light blue hue as opposed to white. The rim design is also new.

All very nice, but if there’s anything we envy, it’s the diesel option.

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Ford Fiesta XTR Sapphire edition – in blue and white only

We’ve finally got more photos of the special edition Fiesta we spied last week – word continues to be that the ‘XTR Sapphire’ edition, as it has been tagged so far, will come with the equipment as described earlier. The cars you see in the photos are the style-sampling mules, one in Aurora Blue and the other in Cool White, which are the only colours for the edition.

Some other details about the cars – originally, Auto ConneXion planned for the edition to have leather seats, which the car in white has, in grey with blue and off white centre panel accents. Elsewhere, the rest of the cabin remains as is, in grey.

Then the Thai-designed interior emerged, and the XTR looks to be going with this one instead of leather. While the original photo from the Thai showcar displayed rather bright blue shades, in the flesh the palette depth of the blue tones are actually quite subdued, as the photos show.

The white XTR has a double tipped end of its exhaust visible, while the blue XTR doesn’t have that. The blue car is almost complete in its representation of what the final product will be like styling-wise when it comes (which is still some months away), so it remains to be seen if the exhaust feature will be part of that package.

The white/grey marking film is from Oracal, so it should well last the distance. Spotted in the blue car’s boot was a pre-cut roll of white roof/tail strip, which is to replace the grey one if so chosen, so whether the retail Aurora Blue XTR will have twin white stripes running down the roof to the rear or retains the white/grey configuration also remains to be seen. The white car wears a blue/grey marking film.

The word is also that the interior will feature a few more refinements, but in essence, what’s there is pretty much what it’ll look like. No word on the final product pricing beyond that bandied earlier – guess we’ll know when the edition gets closer to being introduced.

Gallery of the blue and white XTRs after the jump.
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SDAC’s Experience Fiesta, Experience Hollywood 2011 contest – five grand prize winners announced

There were plenty of entries for Sime Darby Auto ConneXion’s Experience Fiesta, Experience Hollywood 2011 contest, which ran from February 14 to March 31, but only five people emerged as winners for the grand prize of a 5D/4N trip to Hollywood each to catch the American Idol semi-final show live in Los Angeles.

The five grand prize winners are Cheryl Lim Phaik Suan, Thum Weng Yie, Christina Ee Hui Sien, Foo Chong Mun and Azhari Azizi. They were among the many who test drove the Ford Fiesta as part of the creative contest process.

The contest entries submission were collated and the judging process took place in SDAC’s head office in Petaling Jaya on April 12, with a panel of appointed judges comprised of a team from senior SDAC management, a representative of Ford Export & Growth Operations and an internal auditor from Sime Darby Berhad selecting the winners.

The criteria for selection was based on the following categories, with equal distribution of points to make up the total scoring: clarity of entry to the Mission Centre; presentation; key highlights of the product and creativity.

The panel of appointed judges and auditor were not given the participant’s names – only the mission code was used as reference to identify each entry in a bid to exercise caution to avoid a biased opinion and to ensure the judges conformed to selection guidelines and audit procedures.

Fifteen consolation prizes of iPod Nano 8GB, 10 third prizes of iPad 16GB WiFi as well as five second prizes of iPhone4 16Gb were also given away as part of the contest.

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Ford Focus TDCi: 1,365.6 km done on one tank of diesel!

It was a challenge organised by Sime Darby Auto ConneXion to see who could go the furthest distance on a single tank of diesel, in this case with the Ford Focus TDCi. Four media cars joined five customer vehicles over a three-day journey – which ended over the weekend – to see what could be achieved.

There was even a bit of national pride at stake: the participating media had the ASEAN Focus TDCi record of 1,200 km on a single tank – held by Ford Philippines – to contend with. In the end, two of the media cars smashed that record, the winning car clocking 1,365.6 km on a single 53 litre tank, with 67 km left on the distance to empty reading on the vehicle’s computer, with an average speed of 67 kph for the whole journey.

We were there (part of the winning team, no less!), and we’ll have the whole story for you as soon as we can find what’s left of our grey matter! Stay tuned.

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SPIED! Ford Fiesta “XTR Sapphire” edition – stripes, bodykit, blue interior, 7 airbags, coming in two months!


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For a car that’s doesn’t wear a national or Japanese badge, the Ford Fiesta has created quite some buzz in the market, thanks to cool design, good specs and attractive pricing. Cool as it is, there will always be some who want to stand out further, and some owners have already started customising their rides.

Auto ConneXion knows there’s a demand, and will launch a special “XTR Sapphire” edition of the Fiesta soon. According to sources, it should be made public in about two months from now, but we’ve caught it on cam already!


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Pardon the image quality and the fact that we only have two pics (guards were nearby!), but we’ll walk you through what we saw. The XTR gets a full bodykit, which includes a front chin spoiler, side skirts and a rear bumper with diffuser. The latter is in grey.

Twin stripes run the length of the Fiesta – one grey, one white – on this blue car (we also saw a hot looking white example pass by, that’s the other colour offered). Not just that, but there’s a side decal that runs the outline of both rear doors. It’s also in grey/white and has the word “Sapphire” on it.


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The cabin is dominated by blue as well (this pic is of a Thai showcar). The dashboard is in blue, matched with blue door cards and and blue/black seats. Sporty and unique, but not for everyone. Just as well, because not everyone will be able to get their hands on one, as we hear that they’re planning for “around 200 units” of the XTR, which makes it a limited edition.

Besides the visual changes in and out, we also hear that the XTR Sapphire will come with seven airbags, five more than the standard two. The rumoured RM6,000 premium over the top spec Fiesta 1.6 Sport sounds like a good deal too!

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