SVT to Change its Name to “999”? What the … ?
It’s only a rumor at this point, but thanks to a leaked customer survey, there is a slight possibility the Special Vehicle Team may change its name. It has been known as other names in the past, but what is the new potential name, and how is it significant to Ford?
Ford’s in-house performance group has been around for a long time. From 1981 to 1993 we knew them as Special Vehicle Operations or SVO. Then the name changed to Special Vehicle Team (SVT) in 1993, though SVO Australia became Ford Performance Vehicles in 1991. Ford of Europe has always had Ford TeamRS for Rally Racing and has built Rallye Sport (RS) and ST versions of Ford vehicles. So, we’ve seen Ford’s performance group under many names before and now it looks like it may change from SVT to 999.
Not many people will look through the history of Ford and realize the significance of the “999”. It was actually the first nameplate that went racing. It is the original SVT, SVO, FPV, RS, ST, or whatever 999 will become. The Ford 999 was one of two cars that Henry Ford raced in 1902 that he and Tom Cooper built. It featured no bodywork at all, but had an 18.9-liter inline-four that made all of about 75 to 100 horsepower. Oh, and there was no rear suspension, no differential, and steering was done by a pivoting metal bar. It looked scary to drive even for early 1900s-era cars. It was last driven in 1963 by none other than Dan Gurney.
“The car is a little bit deceiving because it’s so high geared, but you’re really covering the ground,” Gurney reported in the July 1963 Ford Times Magazine. “It’s sort of like comparing a running elephant to a deer. The low revs of the engine are what do it, and those four big cylinders. You can feel them working. Until it’s going forty to fifty miles an hour, it doesn’t really settle down, and then it hardly seems to be turning over at all. It’s just chug, chug, chug with a lot of popping, smoke and roar. All the while you’re sitting there, straddling that big engine high on the single seat and remembering to keep your feet out of the way of that exposed flywheel. It’s as big as a manhole cover.” Hopefully our 999s will be a little more safe than that.