After months of anticipating the delivery of their new Ford Mustang FR500S race cars, 19 competitors in the Ford Racing Mustang Challenge for the Miller Cup received their keys during the official series launch this past weekend at Miller Motorsports Park.

Festivities got underway on Friday night with a reception in Salt Lake City, where Miller Motorsports Park owner Larry H. Miller and Ford Racing Performance Group manager Jamie Allison addressed the anxious teams and drivers. On Saturday the teams assembled at Miller Motorsports Park to meet with series officials and attend a number of seminars to help them prepare to compete in the series. The seminars dealt with car set-up, parts availability, the BFGoodrich g-Force R1 tires, the data-acquisition system and the various mechanical parts and systems on the cars. Competitors were also able to complete their registration duties and have photos taken for their identification cards.

The American Family Association, an organization devoted to protecting families from reason and understanding, started a boycott of Ford for being too friendly to homosexual groups. Ford originally caved to AFA pressure though claimed they continued to support gay social events financially. The AFA claims Ford has reduced such donations and has ceased almost all advertising in gay publications. Ford, to its credit, claimed this was because they’d cut back on buying ads everywhere in light of their ongoing financial troubles and wants to treat everyone fairly. We guess they were having too much fun flipping through gay periodicals to read our Knight Rider live blog, which chronicled the night-long Ford advertisement and included a Lesbian/Bi Surf FBI Agent and a, ahem, close relationship between KITT and Mike.

I’m pretty sad to write this, Boyd Coddington died at age 63 on Wednesday at 6:20am. He was a man of many ideas and a hot rod king. I caught a few clips of his show a few years ago, they were very enjoyable to watch. The hot rods he made were definitely amazing. He will be missed by many mustang enthusiasts across the world. Rest in peace Boyd Coddington!