Ford Mustang 2012 review

[Santilli]

I'd like this Mustang. Love the gearing and .50 6th gear.
http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2013-ford-mustang-shelby-gt500-test-review
"The Eaton supercharger in the engine’s valley displaces 2.3 liters, spins faster than the last GT500’s blower, cranks out 14.0 psi at maximum boost (up from 9.0), and takes more horsepower to operate than is produced by the current Ford Fiesta. It looks big enough to inhale a small dog...
Interesting trivia: The GT500’s sixth gear, a whopping 0.50 overdrive, was predictably chosen for fuel economy—the Shelby cranks out 24 mpg on the highway and carries no gas-guzzler tax. As a result, sixth serves up 80 mph at 1500 rpm, which means you can offer joy rides to the rubes and blow their minds all over the dash by telling them your fancy new Ford is geared for 350 mph at 7000 rpm in sixth. (Don’t mention it’s only possible through math, not the laws of physics. Just do a bunch of burnouts and strut off.) "

 

[MaxBurn]

I got a 2012 v6 SEL Fusion last week for my rental. I wasn't impressed with the AWD at all, a more careful read of fords site says it is a part time AWD system so I'm wondering how they can call that AWD? More of a part time 4x4 if you ask me. Basically I experienced some pretty bad torque steer under WOT and I could easily light up either front tire applying power in corners. A performance car this isn't meant to be I guess. The provided transmission manual mode worked ok, didn't seem to be a lot of time lag between switching and it doing it but I didn't spend a lot of time with it. I do feel that with six speeds and some aggressive driving the car was seemingly always shifting and lagging behind what I wanted in automatic mode. It wasn't holding gears or anticipating well IMO, hopefully there is a performance mode I didn't spend the time to look for?

Interior was pretty nice, I liked the type of leather but didn't really care for the design overall though material selection and fit/finish was good. In Texas heat I didn't notice that the leather was uncomfortable in a black/black car, I was expecting that to suck when I picked up the car but it was perfectly fine.

I do rather hate SYNC, can't get it to just act as a sound output for the phone. I want my phones GPS and other apps sound to come out the stereo and through the six cars I have spent time with SYNC I haven't been able to make that happen so I still resort to a headphone style line in jack which all the SYNC equipped cars do appear to have. When I was back home I spent some time with my moms car which is an edge with top of the line SYNC/gps/climate control etc all rolled into one. On this car I even spent the time to set up the bluetooth so I could play sound that way but the reception was horrible, even with my phone in the cup holder right next to the stereo it would drop out. I couldn't believe that because my jambox worked fine no matter where I put it in the same car and again I had to resort to the audio line in on that car. Now because I was the computer expert I of course "got" to update the SYNC software on my moms car and the instructions say it could take up to an hour. Well on her car it took an hour plus a little, the whole time you can't use the stereo or the GPS or the finer controls on the climate control. Good thing I had the jambox with me, we listened to a little over one episode of car talk with the jambox sitting on the dashboard. I'd be interested to hear from people that like SYNC and why, because as far as I am concerned it just sucks. Even the built in GPS paled in comparison to my tomtom app.

 

[Santilli]

Maxburn:

Been driving the Ford Focus 2013 this week, last week 2012. I use the Sport mode shifting a lot. What are they thinking?
They put the shift button on the gear shift, meaning with a close ratio, accelerating hard, one hand is off the steering wheel? That's like a law suit waiting to happen.
Formula one cars use a similar setup, but they put the shift button on the steering wheel, where it should be.

Other then having my radar detector stolen, and the drivers window smashed, it's kind of nice. Same leather, but in a red car on the 2013. 2012 had cloth seats. Didn't fit well, and stained easily.
WHY in a rent a car?

Car seems to handle well, and the ride is stiff enough to give some sort of feedback. I'm averaging 25 miles to a gallon. Not bad, not great, and that's town and driving to jobs.

Still don't like autos, which is making buying a car from Enterprise a problem.

As for sync:
It's pretty awkward, at least the model in the Focus.

Haven't had any problems playing music with bluetooth through any of the 4 different cars that have had sync in them. Haven't tried to use the gps through it yet.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if the SYNC stuff doesn't work real well with Android. That would be MSFT at it's best.

What kind of phones have you tried to use with SYNC?

My 4G slide is far better at Bluetooth, range and sound quality then my prior phone. Nokia Nuron?

 

[Stereodude]

Why are you trying every car in Ford's lineup and where are you getting them from?

 

[Santilli]

Enterprise and Budget rental. I'm trying to find something I like, and find out the plus and minus of each model.

I like the size of the Focus, but the engine gets 25 miles to a gallon, and the gears are too high for me.

 

[MaxBurn]

For the bluetooth/sync complaint above I was using my iPhone. Maybe I am the only one that doesn't get it but I simply could not get tomtom gps audio to come out the stereo along with instacast playing in the background. Neither apps came out the stereo. Seemed like only the music app came out the stereo. Switch to line out - everything works fine. Switch to jambox and that works too. If I could somehow switch the intelligence off in the car stereo and just use it as a bluetooth sound destination like the jambox I think that would be good, but several rental cars and a good 20 minutes frigging with it in my mom's car on vacation didn't get it to work and I view that as a sync failure.

I was pretty impressed with the last focus I rented, interior was on par with whatever hyundai that is they rent which was rather upper end of OK. I wouldn't mind checking out the speedy versions ford offers but of course you won't find those for rentals anywhere. One thing that I thought was dumb was the hatchback partition to hide luggage is a big hard platform and tethered to the hatch to open with the hatch. What do you do with that when you need to fold down the seats and put something big in there and you know, use the cars hatchback like a station wagon? It kills the usability of the hatchback IMO. In my car that is a roll up tube that is easy to take out and shove out of the way to the side so you can stick something big in back.

Car I have been most surprised in a rental so far was a altima 2.5s. It was positively eery driving a CVT for the first time, if you keep a constant throttle position you get one engine note from just off stop up to whenever you back off to stop accelerating. I didn't feel like I was fighting an auto trans either which is a big plus. The ride/handling was a nice mix, plush but still responsive, not as responsive as my car but you won't end up with spinal compression issues on maine roads either. The interior worked for me but it has been too long to remember specifics, I got along with the keyless well as in I loved it. This was just a great rental car, I actually took a picture of the badging on the one I had last so I could look it up later, this was not a car that was even on my radar of interest until I got it for a rental but after that I was looking at options and pricing for the top of the line 3.5SL. I keep trying to find a 3.5 to rent but no joy, even the 2.5 altima rentals seem to be rare/regional.

 

[Santilli]

For a stop gap I found a Chrysler Sebring from a Mechanic. 124k, 2000 year, in good to excellent condition.

Problem is, it's a convertible, and it gets bad gas mileage. Probably be looking for something else as soon as I get it. Price is excellent, about what it's worth as a trade in.

At least this will stop the bleeding with renting cars at 180 a week. Rates went up last week from 117 to 180. Same shit as oil prices. Rip the customer when you have some sort of excuse.

 

[Santilli]

For a stop gap I found a Chrysler Sebring from a Mechanic. 124k, 2000 year, in good to excellent condition.

Problem is, it's a convertible, and it gets bad gas mileage. Probably be looking for something else as soon as I get it. Price is excellent, about what it's worth as a trade in.

At least this will stop the bleeding with renting cars at 180 a week. Rates went up last week from 117 to 180. Same shit as oil prices. Rip the customer when you have some sort of excuse.

The CVT sound interesting. Would like to try the Altima, or some other cars before settling on one.

 

[Stereodude]

A Sebring convertible? How old are you? :razz:

 

[Santilli]

Seems it's a cougar cruizer. They love it.

 

[Stereodude]

I don't think I've ever seen a young person driving a Sebring convertible with the top down.

 

[Howell]

I don't think I've ever seen a young person driving a Sebring convertible with the top down.

College kids. But only as a hand me down.

 

[Santilli]

Turns out its 105k miles.
Banged right rear fender. May need a top when it starts raining.

Mediocre gas mileage. 15 in town, better on the freeway, maybe 25. We'll see tomorrow.

The top is nice when it's 105 degrees, like the last couple days.

Seems the way to sell a 2-4k car is to get new tags then take it down to little Mexico in Concord. Guys pay good money, cash, never register and drive till the tags are due.

This has created a vacum in the 1-4k range for cars in our area, and elevated prices for cars in the 10 year or less range.