Hasta La Gadget!

Those that aren’t drag racers may have no idea what the electronic line lock feature Ford has added to the 2015 Mustang GT is for. A line lock is a tool that locks the front brakes of the car to keep it in place while the rear wheels spin.

Typically, a line lock is used to heat up the rear tires at a drag strip for a better launch. I’m sure in the case of the new Mustang, many a parking lot burnout will be performed with the tool. When the line lock is activated, the driver presses the brake pedal and only the front brakes lock.

This allows the rear wheels to spin and the driver can do a perfect burnout. Doing a good burnout is harder than you might think, just checkout all the burnout fail videos on YouTube for proof. The biggest catch with this feature comes in this little Ford disclaimer: “Electronic line-lock for 2015 Mustang GT is intended for use only on racetracks. Racing your vehicle will void your warranty.”

Check out the image below and look at it closely. It’s an old and blurry image in black and white from the 60′s, but you can see clearly that is a Ford Mustang on top of New York City’s iconic Empire State building. The car was put up there as an advertising stunt to celebrate the launch of the original 1965 Mustang convertible.

If you are wondering how the car got up there, engineers took the car apart into three major chunks and reassembled it on the observation deck of the building. Ford plans to recreate this marketing stunt for the all-new 2015 Mustang convertible.

The new Mustang will be carried up the elevator as well and sit atop the observation deck of the building for two days during the New York Auto show this April. The engineers are still working out how exactly they will take the much larger modern Mustang apart and reassemble it on top of the building with only a 6-hour window of opportunity.

If you’re fortunate enough to be in town between April 16th and 17th, the car will be on display from 8am to 2am on the building’s observation deck.

[via USA Today]

I’ve owned a few cars over the years that had shiny bits in the interior that would glare right in my eyes at certain times of the day. It was very irritating. Ford wants to eliminate that problem and has a slick rig that it uses to simulate the outdoors for use in testing its vehicle interiors.

Ford calls its testing center the Lighting Lab. It’s equipped with 6,000 watts of light that allows the engineers to recreate any lighting condition in the world. The dome-shaped facility has a moving light rig that can recreate conditions simulating lighting from dawn until dusk, changing angle and intensity of the lights to match the time of day.

The goal of the testing process is to reduce the glare on the interior of the car and on vehicle controls and surfaces. The Lighting Lab was used in the development of the 2015 Mustang to create gauges that are legible under all light conditions and an aluminum dash panel that doesn’t glare in driver’s eyes.

“With the Lighting Lab, we can ensure that the first time a buyer sits in the 2015 Ford Mustang, that person will be able to see the interior as the designers originally envisioned it – in the best light possible,” said Mahendra Dassanayake, Ford lighting technical specialist.

[via CarScoops]

If you didn’t get enough mobile news during the week, not to worry, because we’ve opened the firehose for the truly hardcore. This week brought additional peeks at the purported Nokia EOS cameraphone, leaked screenshots of the BlackBerry OS 10.2 update and the arrival of a new budget smartphone from Huawei in the UK. These stories and more await after the break. So buy the ticket and take the ride as we explore all that’s happening in the mobile world for this week of June 3rd, 2013.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile

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