Production Ends on Old Grand Cherokee, But You Can Still Buy One New

What are you looking at? If you are thinking this is a '51 Ford Custom dragged from a barn, you are wrong. If you are now thinking this is a fake patina car that looks like a '51 Ford Custom … also wrong. This car is the creation of John Moss, an industrial artist from Huntington Beach, California. He is deep into surf-town culture and outlaw choppers, best known locally for creating high-end spaces and architectural structures with raw and rustic finishes though Brass Junkie, his business located on the industrial side of town. He is also known to show up at the legendary Donut Derelicts in a thrown-together jalopy that steals the show.Great art is created by a convergence of circumstances that motivate the artist. A stock car with good lines combined with years of suffering over images creates something with more feeling than schlock thrown together to sell or impress the rabble. The best description of why this car exists is a movement called wabi-sabi, an ancient Japanese philosophy that explains why John Moss, and an entire generation of car guys, love old cars.What Is Wabi-Sabi?Travel back with us to Japan in the 16th century, when philosophers discovered an aesthetic that represents the temporary nature of existence and gave it a name. Wabi-sabi is about decay, but not in the rotting vegetable sense; rather it's the way that an old car's seat feels, or the way good furniture's hardwood looks against the leather it's wrapped in. It also implies a direct connection to quality. If you are seeing something in your mind's eye, you got it.1951 Ford Custom Deluxe Found in the DesertAll this struck Moss without his knowing. "I find beauty in the imperfection," says Moss. "I have a minimalist appreciation for what you already have; rust, deterioration, and objects in nature. I only recently discovered the wabi-sabi concept." Another quirk of character is his inexorable draw toward lowbrow custom vehicles. All of this came together when he found this 1951 Ford Custom Deluxe in the desert while looking for something else. Sand and grease had preserved it since Grandma parked it in 1970. He dragged it to his shop and took it apart.The flathead was seized, so Moss swapped it for something more practical. He rooted around for a '65 Mustang rearend to replace the original, lowered it with Jamco and Shoebox Central parts, and left the rest of the mechanical bits as they were.Inside, he sewed up some black upholstery with a diamond pattern, hooked up some rudimentary gauges, and added his signature brass accouterments. The Ford has A/C, and the windows roll up, and there is a newish shifter so it drives. Otherwise, the interior represents a "basic cruiser with a lot of character."Chopped Four Inches With Watson FlamesThe real story is the body. If you look long enough, you will notice that the roof is chopped. Moss has a friend from Maryland that helped with "four in the back and three in the front," while adding a nice slant to the windshield. The floors were gone, so he used 16-gauge steel for repairs and bent a new transmission tunnel over his knee. Note that the rear flip-out side windows still work, and everything looks like it should. They even chopped the stainless trim and frames.Finally, Moss cleaned up the major dents and laid down a base black with Watson-inspired "seaweed" flames. He has another name, cribbed from '60s chopper culture, that we can't say here. "The body wasn't going to be straight and new paint with ripples is the worst look ever," he says. "I grabbed a grinder and ground down the fender." It was the beginning of the same process he uses to create authentic-looking metal and woodwork for a stylized appearance. You are not going to see this car at the Grand National Roadster Show. You are going to see it on the street where it belongs. The '51 Ford is art designed to challenge you, exercise a compulsion, and at the same time makes you think about lead sleds and bombs and how perfectly this look fits this car.Moss added a '53-ish Buick grille and '50 tail lights, and pulled the chrome side trim. He stepped back, and it was complete."Like I said, what you see is what you get. It is functional." And perfect.Watch: Check out this 1950 Ford Custom Coupe

Speculation can be simple, a few folks gathered at a bar and wondering about the future. Creating a physical manifestation of that future and bringing it to life is anything but. Our process began with Garrett DeBry, an ArtCenter College of Design grad, concept artist for BMW and Toyota, and the man who developed our first Apple Car concept in 2016.DeBry is a proper futurist, spending hours poring over Syd Mead designs and listening to the Interstellar and Blade Runner 2049 soundtracks while working on sketches. From our side, we looked further into the future this time around, which afforded DeBry the freedom to design a vehicle that would fit into an Apple Car ecosystem, rather than imagining a comparatively simple autonomous Uber competitor.His inspirations range from the wraparound corner windows of Apple's flagship Chicago store to Amazon warehouse robots to the natural materials and organic shapes of the iconic midcentury modern Charles Eames lounge chair. On this project, DeBry worked to minimize automotive design to its core elements. This thought process is how we ended up with the ultra-slick suspended teardrop you see here, but that was only the start.Once DeBry submitted final sketches, we called on teams from around the world to lift his design off the page. Our second take on the Apple Car was painstakingly modeled in CAD so we could provide the files to a local 3-D print shop. After multiple days printing the 16-piece scale model you see here and bringing DeBry's design into the material world, it received countless coats of paint and finishing touches.Once we reached that point, Mumbai, India-based automotive photographer Kunaal Kelkar came to town to employ his own wizardry. Kelkar's work first came to our attention in 2020 when he published a shockingly realistic photo set that was in reality a scale Lamborghini Huracán posed on a wet treadmill. For the Apple Car, he spent four days building a future city almost entirely out of Apple products found around our offices. The results speak for themselves.

ford f-150-lightning Full OverviewThere's a learning curve that comes with driving and owning your first electric vehicle, and the slope gets particularly steep when you push an EV's battery to its limits. The first time a new EV owner drives far enough that they need to charge in the middle of a trip, they face two hard truths: EVs almost never achieve their advertised ranges when it really matters, and even the fastest charging stations are slow compared to a gas pump.Based on the more than 200,000 reservations for the Ford F-150 Lightning, a lot of Americans are going to learn those lessons behind the wheel of the blockbuster electric pickup truck. Either that, or they'll read this story and take our findings to heart. MotorTrend's real-world driving range and charging times for the F-150 Lightning are a cheat sheet for planning a long-distance drive with few surprises and headaches.What's the Range of the Ford F-150 Lightning?According to Ford, the Lightning can cover 230 miles with the standard battery and up to 320 miles in XLT or Lariat trim with the optional extended-range battery. The top-trim $92,669 Lightning Platinum, which is only offered with the larger battery pack, is rated for 300 miles of range due to its heavy standard 22-inch wheels and the additional weight of the extra equipment it carries.However, if you plan to use a Lightning for long-distance highway trips, those figures paint an unrealistically optimistic picture. Electric cars and trucks are more efficient in low-speed stop-and-go traffic than at highway speeds, and the official EPA range figure is based on a combination of city and highway driving. If you drive extended distances at more than 55 mph in any EV, you're all but guaranteed to come up short of the range number listed on the window sticker.How short? We developed the MotorTrend Road-Trip Range test to answer that question. This real-world test is run at an average speed of 70 mph to more accurately reflect what kind of range you can expect to cover on your longest drives, such as family road trips, weekend runs to the cabin, or sales calls to the farthest corners of your territory. The 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning Platinum achieves a MotorTrend Road-Trip Range of 255 miles, or 15 percent less than its EPA-rated 300 miles. Of course, as with gas cars, your mileage may vary. Expect driving range to fall with extreme temperatures, higher speeds, or significant elevation changes. Alternatively, you can extend that range by driving slower, limiting air-conditioning and other accessory usage, and minimizing hard braking.How Fast Does the F-150 Lightning Charge?Ideally, every Lightning owner will have access to 240-volt charging at home or their workplace where they plug in to take care of most of their charging while asleep or at work. But if you don't have easy access to one of these Level 2 charging stations, or if you find yourself needing to recharge on a long road trip, you may find yourself relying on DC fast-charging stations, also called Level 3 stations. It's in these instances when charging time really matters.To measure how long you'll be waiting, we charged a 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning Platinum from 5 percent to 90 percent using an Electrify America fast-charging station and translated the energy delivered into miles of driving range at highway speeds.The Lightning added 74 miles after 15 minutes of charging and extended that to 133 cumulative miles after 30 minutes. With 45 minutes on the clock, the Lightning had gained 189 miles of range, and after an hour of charging, the electric truck had put on 214 miles of range.That's good but not great. With a maximum rated charging power of 150 kW, the Ford can't suck down electrons as quickly as its main rivals, the Rivian R1T and GMC Hummer EV electric trucks. EV nerds should note, though, that the Lightning momentarily exceeded its stated 150-kW max charging power when it peaked at 160 kW for a couple minutes near the beginning of the test.In all EVs, charging becomes slower as the battery fills up to protect the pack's longevity. The Lightning begins its first step down seven minutes into charging, leveling off around 115 kW for a sustained spell. The power delivery then takes a big step down as the charge nears 80 percent. For many drivers, this would be the point to unplug and carry on. If you're in a region with decent charging options, it's typically quicker to hop from fast-charging station to fast-charging station without ever exceeding an 80 percent charge on the road. That's one more thing you figure out very quickly if you do probe the limits of an F-150 Lightning or another EV.Looks good! More details?