Downshift: Ford Pitches Mustang Sedan and New $25,000 SUV to Dealers

Hello and welcome to The Downshift, or TDS for short, The Drive‘s morning news roundup that gathers the biggest automotive headlines from around the world.

The Downshift summarizes stories into a few sentences and adds links for those seeking more detail. We hope you had a great weekend—here’s your bulletin for Monday, August 10, 2026.

🆕 The Fathom electric pickup isn’t the only cheap Ford on the horizon, as the automaker reportedly showed attendees at a dealer event in Las Vegas an entry-level crossover with a starting price around $25,000. Such a vehicle would help fill the gap vacated by the Edge and EcoSport at the bottom of the company’s lineup. Ford is also said to have presented a prototype for a four-door Mustang at the event, with a targeted starting price below $40,000. The design of the sport sedan was compared to the Porsche Panamera, and in previous events, the company referred to it as the Mach-4. [Automotive News]

🗺️ Volkswagen has introduced the second-generation Atlas Cross Sport for the 2027 model year. Compared to the normal Atlas, it’s shorter, has a lower roof, and features two rows of seating rather than three. It’s powered by the Evo 5 revision of VW’s tested EA888 turbocharged four-cylinder, which makes 282 horsepower in this application. [Automotive News]

🪪 Porsche SE, the top shareholder of Volkswagen controlled by the Porsche-Piëch family, pledged support for the automaker’s transformative restructuring plan that has already cut tens of thousands of jobs in Germany and threatens to eliminate even more. [Reuters]

📰 A man in Dallas died Friday after being hit by an SUV, which threw him 30 feet into the path of oncoming traffic, where a Waymo robotaxi struck him. Nobody was occupying the Waymo at the moment of impact, according to police. The investigation into the incident is still ongoing. [NBC Dallas-Fort Worth]

♦️ Mitsubishi has a new crossover for Australia and New Zealand that admittedly looks quite sharp, called the ASX VR-e, that was penned by Pininfarina. However, it’s really a Foxtron-built EV underneath. [Autoblog]

🔥 In one of the oddest headlines we’ve see in quite some time, two Mercedes-AMG owners are suing the company because they were allegedly branded by the metallic AMG badge the automaker places on its front seats. Per the complaint, a dermatologist apparently confirmed that one of the plaintiff’s burns matched the outline of the AMG logo. [Motor1]

🏁 Weekend race winners: