Daily News: Tuesday 7/18/17

Turn 10 Studios Tease Forza 7 Car ListTurn 10 Studios, developers of the Forza line of racing games, must enjoy cars. Over the past year, as more details of the new Forza 7 game came to light, it was revealed that the game would offer over 700 cars to gamers, the most of any racing game ever. In the continued buildup to the October 3^rd 2017 release, the studio dropped a large teaser in the form of a list of 167 vehicles out of the 700. There is the obvious stuff, including 46 Ferraris, 29 Porsches, and 18 Lamborghinis, but some more obscure metal makes its way onto the list, like my personal favorite, the Hennessey Venom GT. The full list can be found HERE.

Mercedes-Benz X-Class Pick-Up Truck AnnouncedWhile it has been shown in concept form before (as above), today Mercedes-Benz revealed the official production version of their entry into the pick-up truck market, the X-Class. Designed as a mid-size truck—think Toyota Tacoma, Chevy Colorado, and the future Ford Ranger—the X-Class is built with a different core mission. Rather than making a truck civilized for road use like most other manufacturers, Mercedes-Benz decided to take their extremely civilized design experience, and build a truck. While the interior will certainly be Mercedes’ level of normal refinement, their goal is to have the best on-road driving dynamics of any pick-up, to make the interior a pleasant place to be.

Mechanically, the truck will feature four engines, two transmissions, and three variations of driven wheels. For motive power, the truck will either be powered by a choice of two 4-cylinder diesel engines, a 4-cylinder gasoline engine, and a V6 diesel motor. These engines will be connected to either a 6-speed manual or a 7-speed automatic and will power either the rear-wheels or all the wheels. The RWD variant is as expected, but a few months after launch owners will have an option of how to power all four wheels if they so wish. While the traditional selectable 4WD with a low-range box will be available at launch, an always-on AWD 4Matic system will become available sometime after. No matter the options selected, the payload will max out at 2230lbs, with the V6 diesel offering a max towing of 7716lbs.

It is unknown if the truck will come to America, but it goes on sale this November in Germany at the price of €37,299 ($43,106 USD).

Lucid Motors Could be Bought by FordAccording to a Bloomberg News report, the Chinese-backed, California-based electric car company, Lucid Motors, could be acquired by Ford at an undetermined future date. Unlike some other electric car companies, Lucid Motors is delaying breaking ground at their planned Arizona production facility until they have secured sufficient funding to guarantee a product. Working towards this goal, Lucid Motors has reportedly enlisted the aid of Morgan Stanley in regard to raising investment funds for their project. While it is unkown if Morgan Stanley brokered the meeting, Lucid Motors has said that they had a preliminary takeover talk with Ford executives. Ford, with their recent leadership changes, is not interested in acquiring the company in any short amount of time, but have not ruled out the possibility. Having Ford assume ownership of the company would go a long way towards securing funding needed to begin production of their Lucid Air sedan.

The Lucid Air is an electric sedan with various levels of power and refinement planned for the various price points. The top-dog Lucid Air is planned to offer Bugatti-levels of performance with Maybach-levels of luxury. An Air sedan was tested earlier this year at a top speed of 235mph.