What if you take the world's most iconic jock and install the brains of some of the smartest tech nerds on the planet? Well, you get the Micro-Stang by West Coast Customs (WCC) and Microsoft which takes a classic Mustang and tunes it with cutting edge technology.
Called "Project Detroit" by Microsoft and nicknamed "Micro-Stang" by WCC, the car is the epitome of old meets new. The project chooses to eschew Ford's latest styling for the much more beloved, timeless looks of a 1967 Mustang. Rather than just go with a stock classic, the boys at West Coast cut the body of the matte black Mustang off and planted it on the 2012 Mustang's chassis.
From there, they update it with all kinds of tricks and toys that the average Mustang - whether from 1967 or 2012 - will never have. Microsoft promises that the project includes "cutting-edge technology, never before used in automotive applications." That technology is drawn from the entire Microsoft range of offerings, including Kinect for Xbox 360, Xbox 360, Windows 8, Windows Phone, Windows Azure and Bing. The car also uses Ford Sync technology.
So far, we know of a touchscreen instrument panel, a tablet built into the passenger side dashboard, a serious set of wheel and grille lights, an external PA system, a series of smartphone apps, and external cameras. The passenger's tablet can live-stream video from the Kinect cameras outside the car and can serve as an informational and entertainment unit. Apps deliver some unique functions, including customizing things like the horn tone, window messages and interior lighting with the swipe of a finger.
Similar to the recent Ford Hackathon event, the purpose of Project Detroit is to showcase possible vehicle technologies of the future. Microsoft will release open-sourced code from the project so that developers can start working on technologies of their own.
Project Detroit will be more fully revealed on the next episode of Inside West Coast Customs, which will air on the Velocity network on Sunday. The video below is a commercial for that episode.
Source: Microsoft, West Coast Customs
Also, something that would be nice is to see a vehicle that is relatively free of all this techno gee-whizzery, similar to even 20-30 years ago.
Why does anybody need a game system or any other type of entertainment other than a radio in a car? And before all you parents start screaming at me, I believe that TV's and DVD players in cars are just an extension of the baby sitting duties that were long ago passed off to TV and game systems. I, and many other people, made it through our childhood travels without technology. Children today are in no way so different that they need TV in the car.
Also, I am interested in what you think my age group is and how it is that you come to be able to determine a persons age simply based on what they say.