With rumors circulating that Knight Rider might be added as a regular series to NBC’s fall schedule, I felt I should do some research. As a kid, I enjoyed KITT’s voice. Today, many of us know it better as the voice of the teacher on the corny 1990s sitcom Boy Meets World. As KITT, he had a smarmy tone of voice and even had some sarcastic comments.

But the new KITT seemed different. It might be because it’s new and the voice hasn’t found its own personality yet. So I wanted to find out who does the voice for the new iconic car.

Do you know who it is?

It’s Val Kilmer! I couldn’t believe it when I read it, either. Apparently, the network originally expected Will Arnett from Arrested Development to voice the role.  He even recorded the part for the made-for-TV-movie. But his longstanding relationship with a competing automaker would be in jeopardy if his voice issued through the speakers of any Ford vehicles, let alone the iconic Mustang brand. So he had to “respectfully” withdraw his voice two weeks before the premiere. Methinks the competitor had something to say about his decision, which is why it was so sudden and close to the premiere.

Luckily, Val Kilmer saw the Mustang symbol in the sky and came to save the day. He re-recorded the voice for KITT and signed on to do the voice if the network picked up the show.  And because it looks like we’ll be seeing a lot more of Michael Knight’s son, it also looks like we’ll be hearing a lot more of Val Kilmer’s voice.

If you’ve been thinking about taking one of the faster Ford vehicles for an exhilarating spin on Germany’s Autobahn, think again.

The environmentalists have dealt a blow to fun-lovers all over the world. Until now, thousands of race car enthusiasts and all-around speed-lovers could take their fastest cars to this famous roadway and push them to the limits. With no speed limit, they didn’t need to worry about getting tickets or losing their licenses. You might even be surprised to know that the Autobahn has one of the lowest rates of car accidents, too. See what happens when you give people a sense of personal responsibility?

But all of that is about to change. Due to concerns about the environment, global warming and the latest disaster of the week, officials are putting a speed limit on the once-limitless roadway throughout Bremen. They set the  limit, 120 km/h, to create a cleaner environment.

I would probably never go to Germany just to get on the Autobahn and see how fast my car can go. But the story still distresses me. What’s next? Are the police going to issue two tickets when you get caught speeding, one for the actual traffic violation and one for adding to air pollution? Or are they going to give you a ticket for taking the “scenic route” instead of finding the quickest route to your destination? I know these possibilities might sound crazy, but who would have ever thought Germany would impose a speed limit on the Autobahn?

There’s been a rash of thefts going on all over the country. It’s been happening for a few years now, too. I remember it was going on three years ago when I worked at the flower shop, where there was  a fleet of Ford vehicles. Thieves would come into the parking lot in the middle of the night and steal the catalytic converters from underneath the cargo vans.

They didn’t steal the vehicles. They didn’t break into the vehicles. They just climbed underneath and sawed off the catalytic converters. Apparently, there’s a precious metal contained in these pieces that makes them extremely valuable. Some thieves can remove them in as little as three minutes. So in the course of a night, they can probably make a huge profit.

The sad thing is that there’s really nothing you can do to protect your cars from this type of vandalism. Unless you park your vehicle in a secure garage, there’s a risk of having your catalytic converter stolen. You won’t even know it until you get in the car and start it up. There’s a loud rumble from the back of the car that lets you know something is amiss. And some insurance companies won’t even cover it.

Luckily, some states have passed laws against selling these parts to recycling centers that pay for expensive metals. Hopefully, this law will spread and deter people from stealing these parts from vehicles.

The Mustang is one of the most popular and recognized Ford vehicles in the world. That’s probably why car thieves are always trying to get their grubby hands on one. But can you imagine having your car stolen and then finding it 38 years later?

That’s exactly what happened with Eugene Brakke of southern California. He parked his honey-gold 1965 Ford Mustang in front of his Burbank factory one day and never saw it again . . . util last week.

The phone rang, and the voice on the other end was a detective from the San Diego Police Department saying, “We found your car.”

Unfortunately, though, the car fell into the hands of a young girl graduating from high school. Her father bought it for her at a local car dealer for less than $1,200. It was her dream car, and she kept it for more than 35 years. She put thousands of dollars into repairs, including rebuilding the engine recently for $4,000 and some other work to keep it running smoothly.

But when a neighbor pointed out the mismatched tags, she became uneasy. After investigating for months, she learned the car was stolen. She contacted the San Diego Police Department, who then informed her that it was stolen in 1970. The bummer was that the car legally belonged to Eugene Brakke if he wanted to push the issue.

Apparently, he does. The 80-year-old plans on picking up the car when he feels like “fighting the traffic.” When he gets it, he wants to restore the honey-gold color it sported when he bought it instead of the pale blue color that it has now.

I guess the woman who cared for the car and had it through her all-important young adult years is out of luck. If I were in Mr. Brakke’s shoes, I think the right thing to do would be to let her keep it. Don’t you agree?

If you’re flying in or out of the Detroit Metro Airport any time soon, you might notice a new eco-friendly feature: Ford hydrogen-powered buses. Last week, the company delivered two of these E-450 shuttles for taking visitors and passengers from the plane terminals to the parking lots so they don’t end up walking the entire way.

These helpful Ford vehicles are the first of their kind to be used for commercial purposes. This makes the Ford Motor Company the first automaker to accomplish a feat like this. Could it be that Ford is becoming the leader on the pathway to a cleaner and greener auto industry?

The new Ford buses reduce the CO2 emissions by more than 99 percent. And because they’re hydrogen-powered, they help reduce our dependence on foreign oil (and even domestic oil for that matter). Ford has also delivered several more of these buses to Canada. Places like Parliament Hill in Ottawa and others have been using these hydrogen-powered buses for a while now. And with the help of people like U.S. Congressman John Dingell, it was only natural to bring these environmentally-friendly buses back to Detroit, the home of the auto industry.

Congressman Dingell had this to say about the buses at the airport: “I’m so glad that people coming through Detroit Metropolitan Airport will see this fine example of American engineering when they visit.” With any luck, these types of buses will find their way to many other places throughout the world so we can all enjoy a cleaner environment.

To purchase a new Ford vehicle, please visit our Ford dealers - St. Louis or our Illinois Ford dealerships.

You probably haven’t heard a lot about the Kuga, but that’s because it’s one of the Ford vehicles that isn’t available in the North American market.

Yet.

But Ford showcased it earlier this year at the Geneva Auto Show, where it almost stole the show. Based on Ford’s Iosis X concept from the 2006 Paris auto show, the Kuga is a smaller vehicle with a sleek look and even sleeker ride.

According to Ford engineers, the Kuga maintains the automaker’s “kinetic design” language that was also used in the European Mondeo brand of vehicles.

European consumers will get the  first crack at buying the Kuga in June 2008. They’ll undoubtedly appreciate the 2.0-liter turbocharged diesel engine. But don’t let the word “diesel” frighten you. It’s more eco-friendly than the normal diesel engine you might be accustomed to. And with 134 horsepower and a six-speed automatic transmission, it’s a perfect choice for any car buyer.

But what’s under the Kuga’s hood isn’t the only attraction. On the inside, the Kuga has room for five people. And with second-row seats that fold down, you can enjoy extra storage space for hauling groceries or those heavy loads. There’s even room underneath the seats for more storage!

Unfortunately, the Ford Kuga probably won’t be making its way to the North American market. With a price that’s equivalent to about $40,000, there’s simply no profit in store for the Ford Motor Company if they brought it here. There are just too many other options on the market with  much lower price tags for the Kuga to even begin to compete.  For other Ford vehicles, please visit our Ford dealer in St. Louis Mo or our Ford dealership - Waterloo.

You can hardly discuss the auto industry today without mentioning the new hybrids and eco-friendly technologies implemented into the vehicles. Everybody wants to help the environment, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Ford is one of the leaders in hybrid technology. The automaker continues to produce vehicles that are safe for the environment, building on a practice begun when the company created the first hybrid model with the Ford Escape several years ago.

The automaker further cemented its dedication to “green” this week when two of its vehicles earned certification by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. The Focus won recognition as one of the Top 12 Greenest Vehicles of 2008. The Ford Escape took its rightful place on the council’s Greener Choices 2008 list.

The Ford Focus has a reported 34 miles per gallon as a result of its 2.0-liter, 4-cylinder engine. That’s one of the best mileages you’ll find in any vehicle on the market today. With the Ford Escape, you can get 500 more miles out of a single tank of gas than you can on any other vehicle, thanks to its electric motor and 2.3L engine. Even if you don’t care about the environment, who doesn’t want to save hundreds of dollars a year on fuel?

Making it to the ACEEE’s lists is nothing to sneeze at. The council places a great deal of importance and emphasis on the selection process when deciding which vehicles to add to its list. So when you see that these two Ford vehicles have made the list, you can be sure they are some of the best environmentally-friendly products on the road.

For your green Ford, visit our Ford dealerships - St. Louis MO or your Waterloo area Ford dealers.

The Ford Motor Company might be taking its luxury Lincoln brand to the global market in the near future.

In an interview at the end of last month, Ford CEO Alan Mulally said the company is considering distributing the brand in Asia and Europe. Right now, Ford markets it  in the Middle East.

Last year, the automaker sold more than 130,000 units worldwide, but the North American market accounts for 99 percent of those sales. That’s why the focus at this time is on the domestic market. But that doesn’t mean the automaker can’t look to the future in hopes of increasing its brand throughout the world.

Ford’s competitors have tried to expand their brands to a worldwide market, too. Those attempts have been less than impressive, giving Ford pause about putting too much effort into the expansion at this time. GM tried to expand its Cadillac brand to a global market last year, but experienced about 10 percent of its sales outside of the United States.

These talks also come at a time when Ford is lessening  its focus on the Mercury brand vehicles. While the sales volume decreases for Mercury, Ford hopes to increase the volume for the Lincoln. It won’t take the place of the company’s upscale options, which used to be Jaguar and Land Rover.

The Dearborn automaker is also considering taking the Lincoln to the Russian market, where its other Ford vehicles have enjoyed a great deal of success. Hopefully, this will be another way to put the company back on top of the auto market where it belongs.

Is anybody else as excited as I am at the announcement that Knight Rider might be returning to the airwaves as a series?

Probably not.

But last week, NBC aired a made-for-TV Knight Rider movie as a test to see if the popularity was still there for the talking car. Apparently, it is. The network aired it again less than a week later and attracted an impressive number of viewers. I was one of the millions. Were you?

David Hasselhoff is still cool and hip, but he’s getting a little too old to do the moves that Michael Knight needs to do. But the driver isn’t the only new element of the 2008 Knight Rider.   There’s also a new car named KITT, a Shelby Mustang selected from a variety of other Ford vehicles to be the co-star of the new movie. Hopefully, NBC will keep the model for the TV series, because it made a huge splash on the screen.

Here are some statistics to give you an idea of how popular Knight Rider was during its first airing last week:

• It got a 5.0 rating and a 12 share in adults from the ages of 18-49. That means that of all the people in that demographic watching TV at the time, 12 percent of them were watching Knight Rider.
• It got the highest rating for this demographic of all other TV movies in nearly three years.
• The movie garnered the network’s biggest overall viewership for this time slot (except for sports) since the 2006 Emmy Awards.
• More than 12 million viewers tuned in to see the return.

Look for an official announcement in April that NBC will add the TV series to its fall lineup. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Have you ever seen a Ford Mustang GT with the steering wheel on the passenger’s side? If you said no, then you’re not alone. In fact, nobody had even tried to convert a Ford Mustang into a vehicle right-handed conversion model of the iconic brand…until now.

Melbourne’s Mustang Motorsport, an Australian vehicle conversion business, took on the unenviable task of making a Mustang GT in which the steering wheel is on the “wrong side.” Other companies have considered doing this, but they tend to chicken out when the begin looking at the difficulties and complexities involved with the job.

But that didn’t stop Craig Dean of Melbourne Mustang Motorsport. Even after looking at the situation, he had four simple words to say – “it can be done.” And so it was.

Dean went on to say that his company doesn’t “make big noises or claims.” Instead, the workers just “get down to business and do it.” That’s how Dean’s company has been able to convert more than 500 regular Mustangs to right hand drive. And even though the Mustang GT was completely different, he and his employees were up for the challenge.

With the GT, the specifics of the engine and the style resemble that of a race car. That’s not so with a regular Ford Mustang. In order to convert the GT, Dean’s company needed to make or re-engineer more than 300 separate parts to be successful. That’s double the number of parts they need to fix when converting a normal Mustang. The conversion process took over six months to complete, but much of that is because Dean wanted to ensure everything was exactly the same as it would be in its original manufacturing. That is to say, of course, with the exception of the steering wheel and foot pedals.

Melbourne Mustang Motorsport has converted and worked on hundreds of Ford vehicles to meet the demands of its customers. If you live on the continent “down under,” check them out and see what exciting things they can do for your vehicle.