Word: forde
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...ever a crime cried out for grave punishment, it's this one. King and two friends were driving a 1982 Ford pickup in the early-morning hours last June. They spotted Byrd, 49, an unemployed vacuum-cleaner salesman, walking home from a party on a lonely stretch of Highway 96 and offered him a ride. They drove him to a deserted corner of the backwoods and, after a struggle, chained him to the truck by his ankles. Then they dragged him for three miles along a rural road outside Jasper. Byrd was alive for the first two miles, a pathologist...
Everyone loved the Jeep, an instant icon with its short frame and oh-so-rugged ways. Eventually, our hearts and wallets--and behinds--warmed to beefed-up successors, like the Ford Explorer and GMC Yukon. But is the whole SUV craze getting a little out of control with the new Ford Excursion, the King Kong of SUVs at 19 ft. and 8,500 lbs.? Park it in the garage--won't happen. And this six-door nine-seater swallows gas fast enough (about 12 miles per gal.) to warm any oil sheik's heart...
...monster seems to be biting the reputation of Ford's new chairman, William Clay Ford Jr., great-grandson of the founder, who has promised to lead the auto industry into a pollution-free future. But Ford executives know that big, gas-thirsty vehicles are where the consumers and the cash meet. For years, General Motors has raked in oversize profits with the Chevrolet Suburban, long the standard-bearer among land yachts. Analysts say the spacious Suburban holds $10,000 to $15,000 in profit per vehicle. When the Excursion roars into showrooms this fall with a projected sticker price...
...truck sales are hotter than ever and show little signs of cooling off soon. In the past seven years, sales of giant SUVs have rocketed from 50,000 to nearly 160,000. Trucks and SUVs represent 50% of all the vehicles sold in the U.S. In 1997, Ford alone tallied $60 billion in revenues from sales of popular SUVs such as the Explorer, Expedition, Lincoln Navigator and other kinds of trucks...
Still, the hint of a deal with Ford was enough to pull DaimlerChrysler closer to Nissan, and the German-American auto giant may still step in to save the Japanese. Even before CEO Juergen Schrempp inked a deal to acquire Chrysler Corp. for $37 billion last May, his Stuttgart brain trust was urging him to buy a controlling stake in Nissan Diesel. That would give Daimler, the world's largest commercial-truck producer, a solid foothold in Asia...