Though a lot of cars come and go through the Kim household due to my work, I don’t usually blog about them. February so far has been an interesting car month though – interesting enough that I thought I might share a few here.
2010 marks the 25th year of AutoPacific being in business…and I have been at the company a total of 9 of those years! So, we put on a birthday party of sorts at the office, inviting clients, potential clients, and even some members of the media to showcase our unique office that doubles as a consumer research space. I even gave two out of the seven speeches, the first about the state of the auto industry today and over the next five years, and the second about what the car companies can learn from non-automotive consumer brands like Apple, Target, and H&M.
We asked several car companies for some cool cars to use as props throughout our office, and Ford, Hyundai, and Kia happily obliged with some of their latest and greatest. As they arrived a few days prior to the event, I even took a couple of them home.
Let’s start with the Ford Mustang Shelby GT500! Some of you probably remember the awe-inspiring Shelby Mustangs from the 60s. This new one hearkens back to those, but also packs a 5.4L supercharged V8 with…wait for it…540HP. Yes, 540HP!
Pretty mean looking car, isn’t it?
I couldn’t get enough of that color too, called Grabber Blue.
I love these vertically striped seats with the horizontal stitching.
The car was so powerful that I wasn’t even really able to experience the car’s full acceleration until I went out to a deserted road (not many of those in Southern California) out in the foothills of Irvine. The car is scary fast, able to lay rubber even shifting up to third gear. When starting off from a stop, you actually have to be gentle with the gas pedal or else the back wheels will start spinning and losing traction due to insane power. Yes, this is probably the most powerful car I have ever driven, and I’ve driven a lot!
I leave you with this shot of the gauges. Yes, red, white, and blue. It’s so campy given what the car is that you gotta love it.
And now for something completely and totally different, the Ford Fiesta. The car has been on sale in Europe since 2008, but now that Ford is integrating its global operations and because there is now a bigger focus on fuel efficiency in America, Americans will finally start having more access to the very cool smaller Fords available in Europe. The Fiesta goes on sale this summer, but Ford lent us a European-spec model (complete with metric calibrated gauges and German language in the readouts) for the event. That was truly exciting for yours truly as many of you know that fun little cars are my favorite (my own car is a Mini Cooper).
I just absolutely love the styling. It’s dynamic, exciting, and fun – certainly a lot more interesting to look at than most entry level cars.
The American version will have a slightly different front end than seen here, with a smaller grille and a slightly longer bumper for better protection in parking lot speed impacts.
I’ll leave you with a few shots of the setup of the event, which went great!
The Fiesta and Transit Connect (another European Ford that has made its way across the pond to America) in the research showroom space.
We even got the all-new 2011 Hyundai Sonata to display on our turntable! Yes, it’s a Hyundai. Great looking, isn’t it? You’ll be seeing a lot of these on the roads soon.
All the tables and chairs, along with the stage and screen where we gave our speeches. We had nearly 100 people come! As a bonus, lunch was catered by the In and Out burger truck. Yum!