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Fields 'required' to use private aircraft, could make $5.25M as Ford CEO this year

Mark Fields' travels on the friendly skies will soon be a relatively personal affair, as the new CEO at Ford will be required to resume air travel via the company's private planes. Fields caught plenty of flak in 2007 for flying on the company's dime to visit his family in Florida. He's since flown commercial.
According to Ford spokesperson Susan Krusel, who spoke to Bloomberg, Fields (pictured above right, with Bill Ford, Jr. at center and Alan Mulally at left) will switch to private travel "for safety and to maximize his availability for company business." In addition to his new travel arrangements, the 53-year-old exec's salary and bonuses have been revealed.
Regulatory filings by Ford revealed that Fields, whose first day in the big chair was July 1, will receive a base salary this year of $1.25 million and he'll be eligible for $3.5 million in bonuses, both of which are lower than Alan Mulally's $2 million salary and $5.88 million in bonuses received last year. That's also lower than General Motors CEO Mary Barra's alleged $1.6-million salary and considerably less than Sergio Marchionne's $3.19-million fixed salary from Fiat. Despite falling short of other CEOs, Fields' new pay still represents a 33-percent increase over his pay as Chief Operating Officer.

Project Ugly Horse: Part V

The Slippery Slope
I've had a healthy appreciation for cars that stop since one truly unfortunate incident with a runaway 1971 Lincoln Continental.
It's funny how quickly a party can turn from, "We're all having blast" to "What happened to the front of the house, and how many stitches do you think this is going to take?" Standing in a Mustang salvage shop in Kodak, Tennessee, I couldn't help but feel I had strayed into the latter territory with Ugly Horse. There was a supercharged 5.4-liter V8 plucked from a rear-ended Cobra sitting off to my left. The shelves were lined with second-hand Roush and SVT components galore, but I couldn't stop staring at a set of rotors with the approximate diameter of my chest.

1947 Chevy rat rod pickup leaves rubber and smoke in its wake

Cool comes in multiple flavors. One one hand, we have the sophisticated attraction of svelte design and the efficient use of power. Of course, on the other hand there is the allure of being the bad boy and going against the grain. That is part of the appeal of rat rods. Ideally, they are built without rules to an owner's specific tastes, and this widened and heavily modified 1947 Chevrolet pickup rod is a perfect example of that spirit.
Coming down the highway with a bent grille, rusted body and pouring smoke, it looks like the pickup from hell. It backs up the looks with some very impressive mechanicals too. Owner Troy Gubser says that the truck packs a Ford Power Stroke diesel with to 42 pounds of boost that runs out of 8-inch exhaust stacks at the back. He claims it managed 505 horsepower and 885 pound-feet of torque on the dyno. To harness all that power, this hot rod has a ZF five-speed manual gearbox with a ceramic clutch and short-throw shifter. Plus, it has cool little features like a doorbell on the tailgate that operates an air horn.
You might not expect a truck like this to actually be useful, but it has a fifth wheel coupling to haul an RV around drag races and car shows. The air suspension also probably keeps the ride fairly comfy when Gubser wants it to be. Scroll down to check out this beastly rat rod pickup and watch it engage in some diesel drag racing. Warning, there is some NSFW language.