People crashing their brand-new muscle cars is as much a universal constant as the arrow of time and the speed of light. At least when the inevitable happens, and photos of said crash end up all over the internet, the owner will take solace that their new 2015 Ford Mustang is the safest the company has ever produced.

Behind that is a roster of eight airbags, twice as many as the 2014 car offered. And among those is an innovative new knee airbag for passengers--stored in the glovebox lid. Ford Motor Company [NYSE:F] has already been granted 15 new patents for its glovebox door knee airbag, one that Ford says not only increases safety but also interior space.

Packaging an entire airbag into the slim plastic panel that normally forms a glovebox seems like a tricky task, so Ford has opted for a different method. Instead, Ford has put an inflatable plastic bladder within the glovebox door. When an impact is detected and the airbag triggered, an inflator fills this bladder, extending the entire glovebox outer panel towards the passenger's knees.

While this apparently means being knee-butted by a plastic panel, rather than the traditional fabric bag, Ford says it offers protection "similar" to that of a traditional knee airbag. It also sounds a great deal more comfortable than your legs hitting the rigid structure of the dashboard itself, which is the alternative. The unusual design could also have other applications--Ford is exploring the bladder's use in other parts of the car's interior--in Ford's words, "reducing weight and enabling greater design flexibility".

The knee airbag is one of eight scattered around the new Mustang's cabin, working in conjunction with a stronger bodyshell, more peripheral crash sensors and additional pretensioning safety belt technology. All allow the new Mustang to provide a more sophisticated safety setup than before, and those are just part of the car's passive safety setup. Active safety improvements include new high-intensity discharge headlamps for night-time driving, and Ford MyKey--limiting top speed or audio volume when, for example, an owner's child takes to the wheel.

The name Mustang is as intrinsically linked with aviation as it is with automobiles, so it seems appropriate that Ford's latest one-off Mustang build has been inspired by one of America's latest fighter jets. The special 2015 Ford Mustang has been inspired by the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II, and is set to be auctioned off at the Gathering of Eagles charity event at EAA AirVenture, a fly-in aircraft convention taking place this week in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

Ford has supported the event for many years now, producing previous special edition Mustangs inspired by the Air Force Thunderbirds, the Navy's Blue Angels and the Red Tails display teams, among others. Few have been quite as dramatic as the latest F-35-inspired car, which is made extra special by the fact that it is based on the all-new Mustang, in GT specification.

The 2015 gets a combination of glossy and matte titanium-colored paintwork, with a large blue and yellow lightning bolt motif on the rear flanks. There's also a deep carbon fiber splitter to define the aggressive front end styling, a rear diffuser, a set of Recaro seats and some other interior tweaks to give it a suitably aeronautical appearance.

Proceeds from the car's auction will go towards the EAA Young Eagles program—a non-profit organization that has provided free flights to over two million 8-17 year-olds since 1992, with the aim of inspiring them to take up a career in aviation and its related faculties. Last year's Thunderbirds Mustang sold for almost $400K—so there will be high hopes for the Lightning.

Unfortunately for the actual F-35 fighter jet, the fleet has been grounded due to safety concerns after an engine fire. However, investigators are said to be close to determining the cause of the fire.

It’s hard to believe that in the 50-year history of the Mustang, Ford Motor Company [NYSE:F] has never built a version for right-hand-drive markets. Well, all that’s set to change with the sixth-generation car, which has been confirmed as the first Mustang developed for global markets, meaning it will be offered in both left- and right-hand-drive configurations.

Today, Ford revealed its first right-hand-drive Mustang, one of a handful of prototype versions that will be used for calibration testing in a handful of markets. The new Mustang goes on sale in the U.S. this fall, as a 2015 model, and will reach more than more than 110 countries next year including right-hand-drive markets such as the U.K., Australia, India and South Africa (there are 25 confirmed in total).

While the U.S. is the largest market for the Mustang, with more than 9.2 million sales since the car’s debut in 1964, more than 161,000 examples have been sold outside of North America in that time, usually via private imports. And, some of these private imports have been done by firms specializing in swapping the steering wheel from the left to the right.

The 2015 Mustang will be available with three engine configurations—base V-6, Mustang EcoBoost and Mustang GT—but most overseas markets are expected to only receive the four-cylinder Mustang EcoBoost model and V-8-powered Mustang GT. Further down the track will be the high-performance variants, the first of which will be a new SVT-enhanced version thought to be labeled a Mustang GT350.

Do you like your Ford Mustangs like you like your Peterbilts? We hope so, because it seems that the muscle car icon could be climbing the transmission ladder up into a space normally occupied for bigger machines.

Ford Motor Company [NYSE:F] is working on a ten-speed automatic gearbox together with General Motors Company [NYSE:GM]. According to Automotive News (subscription required), the new gearbox will initially appear in Ford's larger vehicles like its pickup trucks and next-generation Lincolns, and will eventually do duty in the Mustang.

The information comes from an article outlining plans for the gamut of the Ford lineup. The Mustang tidbit comes way at the bottom. In fact, it's the very last line in the entire article, and there is no source cited nor is there mention of a date when it might happen.

It seems we might be a few years away from such a cog swapper finding a home in the Mustang, so we wouldn't hold off on ordering the new 2015 model if you were planning to.

One of the most controversial aspects of the all-new 2015 Ford Mustang is its turbocharged four-cylinder EcoBoost engine. The new engine, displacing just 2.3 liters, may upset some traditionalists, but it will provide a more-efficient alternative as Ford Motor Company [NYSE:F] looks to expand the Mustang's appeal both in the U.S. and Europe.

How efficient, exactly? A set of leaked window stickers posted on the Mustang 6G forums provides the first fuel-economy data for the EcoBoost. If the stickers are genuine, the turbo four will be EPA-rated at 26 mpg combined (22 mpg city, 31 mpg highway) with the six-speed manual transmission (figures for the six-speed automatic weren't released).

Figures were also released for the 3.7-liter V-6, an updated version of the engine offered in the current Mustang. For 2015, it will achieve 21 mpg combined (17 mpg city, 28 mpg highway) with the manual transmission and 22 mpg combined (19 mpg city, 28 mpg highway) with the automatic. That's actually a slight decrease from the 22 mpg combined (19 mpg city, 29 mpg highway) rating for the 2014 Mustang V-6 coupe manual, and 23 mpg combined (19 mpg city, 31 mpg highway) with the automatic.

The EcoBoost beats both of them but, given its smaller displacement, that's not too surprising. Of course, this isn't the first time Ford has offered a four-cylinder engine in the Mustang. A four-cylinder that—coincidentally—displaced 2.3-liters was available in the Mustang from 1979 to 1993, so how does it stack up to the EcoBoost?

Fuel economy data for the 1984 model is available on the EPA website, adjusted to revised rules introduced in 2007. Thirty-one model years removed from the 2015 Mustang, it's the earliest model available for comparison.

The base 1984 Mustang was rated at 20 mpg combined (18 mpg city, 22 mpg highway) with a three-speed automatic, and 22 mpg combined (19 mpg city, 22 mpg highway) with the available four-speed manual.

Ford also offered a sporty SVO model at the time with a more-powerful turbocharged 2.3-liter four. It was rated at just 19 mpg combined (17 mpg city, 24 mpg highway) with the only available transmission, a five-speed manual.

Three decades of technological advancement doesn't bring a dramatic increase in efficiency, then, but that's not the only way to measure progress.

In 1993, its last year, the base, non-turbo four-cylinder engine was rated at 105 horsepower, while the SVO produced 200 hp in its last year, 1986. The 2015 EcoBoost, on the other hand, is expected to produce 310 hp. Now that's progress.