2010 Ford F-150 SVT Raptor

Over the years, the Ford Special Vehicles Team built its reputation on how well its performance-tuned cars and trucks carved up the road. But the latest product from Dearborn's in-house skunkworks, the 2010 F-150 SVT Raptor, takes a sharp turn off-road and into terrain that its predecessor--the street-fighting supercharged F-150 SVT Lightning--never dared to tread.

Like any SVT vehicle, the Raptor is capable of mundane tasks such as flying to the grocery store or winging through commuter traffic.

But this SVT truck is at its best when it's swooping down the desert floor at full speed, dodging rocks and sailing over whoop-de-dos.

Based on the F-150 pickup, the Raptor body is widened by seven inches to accommodate honking 35-inch-tall desert tires and extra wheel travel--11.2 inches front and 13.4 inches rear. From the A-pillar forward, it gets all-new SMC body panels that wrap around the stock three-valve, 310-hp, 365-lb-ft, 5.4-liter Triton V8 (320 hp and 390 lb-ft on E85, if they sell it in your part of the Mojave). The black Raptor grille is wider than the stock F-150 grille, and the skid plate angled below the bumper replaces the stock air-dam lower panels.

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Ford Raptor

Though they are increasingly fewer and farther between, there are still places in the world where you can drive full speed across the desert, foot to the floor, dodging rocks and wailing on whoop-de-dos the whole way. It's a fleeting form of freedom and if you like it, better to act sooner rather than later.

To fully enjoy these places at these speeds, Ford has made the Raptor.

Based on the F-150 pickup, the Raptor is widened by seven inches to accommodate big, honking desert tires and extra wheel travel--11.2 inches front and 12.1 inches rear. From the A-pillar forward, it gets all-new SMC body panels that wrap around the stock three-valve, 320-hp, 5.4-liter Triton V8. The black Raptor grille is wider than the stock F-150 grille, and the skid plate angled below the bumper replaces the stock air dam lower panels.

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Ford's Transit Connect

Ford has launched its Transit Connect in the United States, and about time, too. It's one of the coolest vehicles coming out this year. And at a starting price of $21,475, it's a bargain, too.

The Transit Connect isn't new. In fact, it's been on sale around the world since 2003, and Ford has moved 600,000 of them. But it's new to the States, and everyone from small-business owners to bicyclists to kayakers to race teams should be grateful. It's perfect for you.

Ford's 2.0-liter Duratec four powers the Transit Connect, producing 136 hp and 128 lb-ft of torque. With that engine coupled to a four-speed automatic transmission, the van gets 22 mpg city and 25 mpg on the highway.

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Ford Fiesta

Even without the sparkly green paint we took to calling metallic Kermit, the Ford Fiesta would have turned heads. Its shape jolts a conservative American sensibility, which, for the most part, equates tiny vehicles with cheap, bland and throwaway. Recently, cars such as the Mini Cooper have done much to chip away at that perception, but eons of crap are hard to overcome. Think infamous, such as the Yugo, or utterly forgettable, such as Ford's own Aspire--if you can remember it.

The Fiesta instead celebrates the possible in the B-segment, without succumbing to lowest-common-denominator assumptions. Europeans have long understood that small doesn't have to mean bad; they bank on it, in fact, many paying a premium for tiny cars packed to the gills with goodness and fun. And style.

2010 Ford Taurus

Ford Motor Co.'s success with its sixth-generation Taurus lies not in the quality of the vehicle--it may prove to be the best sedan the company has ever produced--but in the company's ability to convince customers that this is a Taurus.

When the Taurus was unveiled in 1985 as an '86 model, it was a sensation stylistically and set the mark for American full-size sedans for a couple of decades. Ford sold 200,000 of the aerodynamically styled four-doors the first year, and the Taurus name was forever burned into the car-buying public's consciousness.

More than 7 million Tauruses have been sold since then, and 4 million remain on the road. Growing families bought them and then handed them down to new drivers. The cars were passed along to college students. Salespeople rolled up hundreds of thousands of miles on their Tauruses and then bought new ones. They became the car du jour at car-rental agencies.

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