There is a huge difference between one of us throwing something together and bolting it in one car, vs. ford engineering, testing, tooling, assembling, and installing the unit in thousands of cars. I would say that honestly that is the whole reason it is not coming out yet is that it is still under development. They dont just want to throw just anything out there (like the IRS in 03-04) and have it break, and not perform up to spec. Just wait a year or two, and it will probably show. We all know that this platform is IRS friendly. Lets give them a chance to make one. Ford always like it to be a suprise.

Amazing! The ride in my 91 was never what I would have called harsh, nor is the ride in my 02 GT, lets see to date the 02 has carried me as far south as South Caolina, as far north as New Hampshire and as far west as Kansas (with 21 hours straight from Kansas to Virginia), ride comfort was a non issue. Unless of course we are actually living in the matrix and real world experiences such as this dont apply.

They have had test mules with the IRS right along side with the SRA, so I would disagree with you on the "it's just under development" argument. Especially since they did rush a hack job IRS in the '03s as you pointed out.

I think they are just holding the IRS until later in the future when interest dies down, so they can bring it back are generate more momentum when they need it. They should have no trouble selling every one of these, so they might as well make every penny they can (they certainly need it).

Rampant, I agree with what you're saying. And lots of companies do the same thing. It's what happens when marketing people get too many martini's at lunch, and start creating business strategy. "If we just cripple <hick>, the fiirrrsssttt version. Weeellll, then we can make even more money on the neexxxttthhh version". Under the false assumption that they are brilliant, consumers are stupid, and that their choices will have no short term sales impacts, or long term reputation impacts, etc...

You don't see BMW/Acura/Toyota saying, "Hey, let's put a spruce log in the first version of the X, so we can fix it later". Customers see through it, except for zealots/purists who don't care. So it matters if you're targeting your product for the old markets, or trying to break into new ones. Ford said new, then targeted old.

If Ford made the IRS standard equipment in all Mustangs, I am sure the cost would drop way down to less than $2k most likely. But when there are only ~7,000 to be made, that will drive up the cost. An IRS capable of handling the power of the GT500 will be more expensive than an IRS capable of handling the power of a G35. I am not going to pretend that I know how much more it would cost to have IRS over an SRA. Maybe someone would like to research and see the cost of the C6 Z06's IRS, or the Viper's, or the GT's even, this would be much more comparable as far as the cost of an IRS capable of handling the horsepower and torque needed for the GT500.

I agree that IRS would hold up better on a poorly paved road but...do you really test the handling limits on poorly paved roads? heck, I rarely explore the handling limits regardless of road condition.

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Originally posted by dke@June 1, 2005, 12:31 PM
And Ford is full of poo of they're saying IRS costs $5,000 more. You can't convince the sane that G35 would be $26,000 if it wasn't for that pesky IRS. Or that less than $1,000 in parts is somehow costing them $5,000. If it is, that shows why Ford is having problems.

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As stated above, there's more to that figure than just the parts. Ford must account for how much IRS would slow down the production line, warrenty claims, engineering, testing...etc. And cars like the G35, RX8,..etc can offer IRS because the entire line was designed for IRS. These cars also don't offer anywhere near 450 hp/450 tq, which means their drivelines don't need to be as robust. I'm sure that if IRS was on all the mustangs then the bump in price would be less than $5k.

<!--QuoteBegin-dke@June 1, 2005, 12:31 PM
Lastly, specs aren't facts. Sorry, get out and drive an M3. Specs say, Mustang GT and M3 drive like they are the same car. Get in them both, drive them, and tell me what you think. I did (with the last generation) and it wasn't that close. A pro driver is not the every day driver -- and the balance and feel was completely different, even if the slalom specs or 1/4 mile don't reflect that. I'm hoping that Ford totally changes things. I want them to create a world beater. It looks like they will, in the quarter mile, and on the track -- but not on the road. But I'll wait and see.

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I agree. I haven't driven the lastest M3 or MGT but I would go out on a limb and say that the M3 drives better. There's definitely more to a car then it's specs. but here's a question for you. Is IRS a requirement for a car to be fun to drive? I submit that it is not.

Wombat (Dale), I don't think IRS is a requirement for a car to be fun to drive -- occasionally. It wouldn't matter much in California or sunny climes. On Ohio roads, it stands a SIGNIFICANT change to make the difference between being fun to drive occasionally, and fun to drive regularly.

And I agree with your point that if Ford had designed the car for IRS, then you're amortizing R&D costs across the whole product line, thus it doesn't cost much. (actually, that was the point I was trying to make). When some moronic bean-counter is trying to amortize the costs of IRS across one small part of the product line, they can artificially make the costs appear to go way up. But that's why most sane manufacturers don't do that. Even if they designed the IRS for the Cobra to handle the power, they'd use it in the future on other products (slightly downgraded, or just over engineered for things like SVT trucks, and so on), or if they had just used a variant they already had (like from the GT, and so on) it wouldn't have been near that much. So the point was they weren't being honest -- and I'm not gullible enough to buy their hype, and as consumers we should be offended when HTT and others try to pass off double-speak or obfuscation as fact.

If Ford/HTT said, "this car is a pony car -- designed to be a monster in the 1/4, and not too bad on a track", that's fine. When they say, "BMW killer and IRS is coming", then say, "We changed our minds because it doesn't need IRS to kill BMW, and IRS would cost $5,000, and it handles as good without it" and other smelly stuff, we should keep them honest.

That's actually an excellent point. I hadn't thought of that.

No more so than, say, a 500hp motor... :dunno:

I agree with you. But I don't think HTT lied for the reasons stated above. I think he may have been disingenuous for reasons that hit closer to home. I think the reason they weren't willing to amortize the expense of designing an IRS to handle the power of the Shelby, is that Ford is in serious financial difficulty and couldn't afford to spend the money on it. Clearly, they don't want to tell the public: "Hey, we're hemorrhaging money over here and we don't have the R&D funds to develop a high power handling IRS for the Mustang application."

So that, plus the fact that their existing base (which does seem to be buying up this car in record numbers) clearly WANT SRA, make for an easy decision.

Personally, I think it's a myopic strategy too, but perhaps one based upon short term necessity and demographic research.

I agree.

It could be that Ford is trying to build cars that are more reliable and change public opinion. A tested SRA makes more sense then an untested, more complex, and more expensive IRS. Not to mention that this car will be the second most powerful in its line-up and will be sold to customers that will push it's limits on a daily basis. So if the IRS needs 2 more years of testing to work out the bugs then so be it. I don't think anyone wants a half hiney IRS that won't stand up to hard launches and boat loads of power.

No, no one wants a half hiney IRS. :jester: