Best Selling Performance Car in Germany? … Ford Mustang 350 Shelby!

Beating out the locally built Porsche 911!

Ford Mustang – Germany’s favorite sports car

In Germany, the land of the Autobahn, where speed is regarded as a national right, the best-selling sports car last month wasn’t the locally-built Porsche 911. It was the Ford Mustang.

The Mustang, built in Flat Rock, Mich., is still a novelty in Europe, where it went on sale for the first time last summer. During the Mustang’s most recent redesign for the 2015 model year, Ford executives decided they wanted to make it a global product. Before, it had been sold mainly in the United States. Even so, thanks to the popularity of American television shows and movies overseas, the car is well known in other countries. European customers just hadn’t been able to easily buy one before.

The Mustang is relatively expensive in Germany compared to the United States. Prices for a four-cylinder turbocharged model there start at about €38,000, or roughly $43,000. Prices for that model in the U.S. start at less than $26,000. Prices for the powerful, V8 Ford GT start at the equivalent of almost $50,000, while the car costs about $32,000 in the U.S. (Car prices in Germany are quoted with taxes and fees included, which is not the case in the U.S.)

Despite the higher price, the GT is, by far, the most popular version of the car in Germany, according to Ford (F).

 

Republican Obstructionalism – Shelby Stops The Senate

This is a massive abuse of power and position by Alabama Senator Shelby. If the chickensquat Democrats don’t censure him for this, or use the “nuclear” option –  they are fools.

Report: Shelby Blocks All Obama Nominations In The Senate Over AL Earmarks

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) has put an extraordinary “blanket hold” on at least 70 nominations President Obama has sent to the Senate, CongressDaily (sub. req.) reports. The hold means no nominations can move forward unless Senate Democrats can secure a 60-member cloture vote to break it, or until Shelby lifts the hold.

“While holds are frequent,” CongressDaily‘s Dan Friedman and Megan Scully report, “Senate aides said a blanket hold represents a far more aggressive use of the power than is normal.”

Shelby has been tight-lipped about the holds, offering only an unnamed spokesperson to reporters today to explain them. Aides to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid broke the news of the blanket hold this afternoon. Reid aides told CongressDaily the hold extends to “all executive nominations on the Senate calendar.”

According to the report, Shelby is holding Obama’s nominees hostage until a pair of lucrative programs that would send billions in taxpayer dollars to his home state get back on track. CongressDaily laid out the programs Shelby wants to move forward or else:

– A $40 billion contract to build air-to-air refueling tankers. From the report: “Northrop/EADS team would build the planes in Mobile, Ala., but has threatened to pull out of the competition unless the Air Force makes changes to a draft request for proposals.”

– An improvised explosive device testing lab for the FBI. From CongressDaily: “[Shelby] is frustrated that the Obama administration won’t build” the center, which Shelby earmarked $45 million for in 2008. The center is due to be based “at the Army’s Redstone Arsenal.”

Though a Shelby spokesperson would not confirm that these programs were behind the blanket hold, the Senator expressed his frustration about the progress on both through a spokesperson earlier in the day, the magazine reports.

Back in Alabama, the Mobile Press-Register picked up the story early this afternoon. The paper confirmed Reid’s account of the hold, and reported that a Shelby spokesperson “did not immediately respond to phone and e-mail messages seeking confirmation of the senator’s action or his reason for doing so.”

A San Diego State University professor and “Congressional expert” told the paper “he knew of no previous use of a blanket hold” in recent history.