The article makes some very interesting points about why it was farmed out to Shelby and not done in-house. They also have an idea for what to do with SVT.

 

Goof info. Great idea with the SVT thing. The thing that made me chuckel was the reference to bringing in people from Jag and Aston to help with quality. On the radio this morning they were talking about some newest quality incident report out. One of # of issues per 100 cars ratings. Land Rover was the worst. Volvo was # 2. And I dont remember where Aston and Jag were but the guy was saying it wasnt good ratings. Im thinking they should leave those guys at home to fix their own stuff first. We can screw ourselves up without help

 

Goof info??? What exactly are trying to tell me?????

 

I dont get it. Isnt that was SVT used to do? Take a few F-150's, Stangs & Contours hop-em up and then sell them? Doesnt sound like a new idea. Also, how is the GT500 made? Is that on the same line as 200k other cars?

 

LOL that was supposed to be GOOD. SVT will have a plant to do this now not a small section of another plant. They wouldnt be the b*stard child in the plant family. Sounds like a much grander scale. Time will tell.

 

I don't believe SVT had their own production facilities.

 

Right, but they had the ability to crank out 3 different cars at one time (Lightning, Cobra, Tour/Focus).

http://news.thomasnet.com/IMT/archiv...html?t=archive

All I am saying is the article is not telling us anything great.

 

OK, SVT engineered three different vehicles but they didn't actually produce them. The article you linked is about the "niche line" at the Romeo engine plant. What the article is saying is let SVT run as if it's small independent company within Ford with it's own production lines, inventory, etc. Get it?

 

I think the problem as we see it is; it was that way, then they kind of maxed out in the GT effort(which by any standard was really a total sucess), got caught off guard with little or no input on the new F-150, and put on hold again while their engineering capacity was used for other new platforms(which was a well intentioned but misapplied attempt to get more out of what might be Fords best engineering team). Unfortunatly, Coletti left, and while SVT was leaderless, they dismantled it completly(it was a team, product planning, marketing , customer responsive with top flight gearhead engineer's). Now Ford may have to try and reconstitute the VERY SAME THING in order to try and get more value out of more plebian models. Niche marketing is the way to profitability for Ford, because I can in no way see an ability to compete on volume with the Asian carmakers. Look how they turned MAZDA around. VERY specific marketing of very specific cars to die hard customers. And profitable! Of course SVT had some teething problems, it was a totally new revenue stream for a domestic. Now its the other guys who can learn from Fords lessons and make the easy $. IMO