SVT RIP

Jason C · 03-07-2006, 07:08 AM

Team spiritless: Ford's SVT concept is history

Quietly, Ford Motor Co. has been dismantling SVT — the Special Vehicle Team — and sources inside the company suggest that as of April 1, SVT as we've known it since 1992 will cease to exist.

Just over a year ago, I wrote a column titled "SVT: A near-death experience?" It was more prophetic than I'd hoped. SVT, responsible for such products as the SVT Cobra Mustang, the SVT Lightning pickup, the SVT Contour and the SVT Focus, no longer has a dedicated marketing staff, a dedicated public relations staff, an independent engineering team, a press fleet or an events trailer. The dealer network that was painstakingly assembled among Ford's top dealers has crumbled, and some dealers reportedly are talking about a class-action lawsuit.

SVT's longtime executive staff is gone, and, oddly enough, so are the Ford executives who developed and executed SVT's demise.

Yes, the 2007 Mustang in Shelby Cobra trim is still coming, and yes, it was developed by SVT. And yes, it'll have SVT badges, because it's too late to take them off. But it is the last genuine SVT product.

By "genuine," I mean it was developed by SVT, from concept to execution, then sold through the network of 600 dedicated Ford SVT dealers, who paid to be part of SVT, sent employees to SVT training and stocked SVT parts. Any future Ford products that carry an SVT badge, and it is unlikely any will, will be more of a "suspension tuned by SVT"-type vehicle. And the 7,500 Shelby Cobra Mustangs sold for 2007 — more, if they can get enough transmissions — will be offered to all 3,900 Ford dealers, not just SVT participants.

SVT has had no dedicated products since 2004. A high-performance version of the new Sport Trac, called the Adrenalin, was shown at the New York auto show in March 2005. At a preview for journalists, SVT Director Hau Thai-Tang said that the Adrenalin "is going to turn the performance vehicle market upside down" when it goes on sale as a 2007 model. Then, last month, the Adrenalin was canceled as part of Ford's "Way Forward" restructuring campaign. "As part of our way forward, we are adjusting our product plan and decided not to produce the Sport Trac Adrenalin," said Ford spokesman Jon Harmon. The Ford GT supercar, which was developed largely by SVT engineers but was not called an SVT model, will end production later this year.

If you check the official SVT Web site, there remains a glowing story about the Adrenalin, and when it's coming to market. "I guess we're a little behind on that Web site," said one Ford executive. Yes, I guess.

This is the second such embarrassment for SVT: The company showed a concept version of a new 500-horsepower Lightning in 2003 and promised to produce it, but in late 2004, pulled the plug.

SVT was founded in 1991 by Robert Rewey, Ford's vice president for marketing and sales, and Neil Ressler, Ford's chief technical officer. The idea was that SVT would consist of a small group of engineers, designers and marketing professionals who would work inside Ford, charged with building and selling high-performance versions of existing products. SVT also set up a separate dealer network, signing up Ford dealers who had an interest in selling performance products.

In 1992, the first two SVT products were launched: the 1993 F-150 Lightning pickup and the 1993 Mustang Cobra. In 1997, the SVT Contour was introduced, and in 1999, the second-generation Lightning went in sale. In late 2001, the '02 SVT Focus went on sale. By 2004, when production of the Lightning, Mustang Cobra and SVT Focus ended, the company had sold about 145,000 SVT products.

So what went wrong?

It appears that the balls-out effort to build the Ford GT by the company's 100th anniversary took its toll on the SVT staff, slowing development of more mainstream future products, such as the next-generation Lightning, an updated SVT Focus and an SVT version of the Fusion. The Ford executives who oversaw SVT, group vice presidents Steve Lyons and Phil Martens, didn't give SVT the resources it needed to rebuild.

Martens is gone; he's running Plastech, a company that supplies spoilers and scuff plates and other bits and pieces to the manufacturers. And Lyons retired March 1 to move to Arizona and run a Ford dealership. Reportedly Lyon's replacement, Cisco Codina, likes SVT, but it's too late.

Why? Because SVT's top executives are gone, too. John Coletti, the bulldog engineer who was the heart and soul of SVT, retired at the end of 2004. Tom Scarpello, Coletti's counterpart on the marketing side, moved to Jaguar. Chris Theodore, a Ford vice president who spearheaded the Ford GT, is gone. This leaves the talented, personable Hau Thai-Tang to run SVT. Essentially, he's a captain without a ship.

It's painful to see what has happened to SVT, especially when you look at the success of Chrysler's SRT program, which in many ways mirrors what SVT was. In the grand scheme of Ford's problems, botching SVT is a small one. But to enthusiasts, it speaks volumes.

Nearly 10 years ago I was in Las Vegas, the first to drive the upcoming SVT Contour. John Coletti and I, en route to some all-you-can-eat buffet at a casino, were talking about GM's current strategy of hiring brand managers for each model. It was not a successful program, but I was playing devil's advocate.

"Maybe it's a good thing," I told Coletti, "to have someone whose job it is to be excited about the Chevrolet Cavalier."

Coletti thought for a moment. "But wouldn't it be better to just build cars that you didn't have to pay someone to be excited about?"

Yes, John, it would. And you and your team always did.

http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do...ticleId=109512

JST · 03-07-2006, 08:41 AM

Whatever. The company botched every aspect of the SVT program from day one. The cars were great, as far as they went, but for limited production performance specials they simply didn't offer enough extra performance--and they were marketed badly (i.e., not marketed). It was, weirdly, a point of pride for a while among SVT folks that they did not advertise.

ff · 03-07-2006, 08:48 AM

True that. So little advertising, to the point where they never seemed to draw much attention to themselves (that I noticed). Well, not completely true. You do/did hear a fair amount about the Mustang SVT. Beyond that, though...

blee · 03-07-2006, 09:20 AM

I don't think the problem was performance so much as awareness. I'm not sure how much money was actually spent on marketing, but it's pretty clear that it wasn't spent outside the very small realm of performance enthusiasts. For a while after I got my Focus, I used to stare at the person behind me at traffic lights. It was kind of entertaining to notice how many of them would squint and mouth the letters "S, V,....T?" to themselves or their passengers.

JST · 03-07-2006, 09:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by blee

I don't think the problem was performance so much as awareness. I'm not sure how much money was actually spent on marketing, but it's pretty clear that it wasn't spent outside the very small realm of performance enthusiasts. For a while after I got my Focus, I used to stare at the person behind me at traffic lights. It was kind of entertaining to notice how many of them would squint and mouth the letters "S, V,....T?" to themselves or their passengers.

No money was spent on marketing during the first several years of the program. I think the first SVT ad I ever saw was for the SVT Focus, and by that time they had decided to axe the car.

Ford has deep, deep problems. It's not that their products are, at root, bad (they're actually pretty good), but somehow the execution and the follow-through just doesn't get done. The SVT Focus was a great car in search of a slightly better engine and a marketing campaign. The Fusion is a very good car in search of a slightly better engine and a marketing campaign that creates some buzz-as I've said before, the Fusion has, from a product standpoint, EVERYTHING necessary to take over the mantle of cheap chic that VW has dropped with the new Jetta, but without effective advertising, it's just another mainstream sedan.

It's tiresome. It really is.

JST · 03-07-2006, 09:37 AM

Expanding on my last a bit--as someone who's always had an attachment to Ford and Detroit, I have started to feel about Ford Motor the way I feel about the Lions. I root for the guys, and I'd really like them to succeed. But they've shot themselves in the foot for so long, and their management has been so unremitting its incompetence and so lacking in its ability to deliver for its fans/customers that I've just stopped watching.

ff · 03-07-2006, 09:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JST

Expanding on my last a bit--as someone who's always had an attachment to Ford and Detroit, I have started to feel about Ford Motor the way I feel about the Lions. I root for the guys, and I'd really like them to succeed. But they've shot themselves in the foot for so long, and their management has been so unremitting its incompetence and so lacking in its ability to deliver for its fans/customers that I've just stopped watching.

Go Packers!!

blee · 03-07-2006, 09:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JST

No money was spent on marketing during the first several years of the program. I think the first SVT ad I ever saw was for the SVT Focus, and by that time they had decided to axe the car.

Ford has deep, deep problems. It's not that their products are, at root, bad (they're actually pretty good), but somehow the execution and the follow-through just doesn't get done. The SVT Focus was a great car in search of a slightly better engine and a marketing campaign. The Fusion is a very good car in search of a slightly better engine and a marketing campaign that creates some buzz-as I've said before, the Fusion has, from a product standpoint, EVERYTHING necessary to take over the mantle of cheap chic that VW has dropped with the new Jetta, but without effective advertising, it's just another mainstream sedan.

It's tiresome. It really is.

Well, every car can use more power. In the SVTF's particular case, though, I think you're right. It was a solid package in 2002 but was outgunned by about 30hp in 2005. Good thing they killed it after 2004.

I wonder if Ford really know who they want to buy their cars. If anyone finds their sedan commercials or ads interesting, it certainly isn't me...but I'm pretty squarely in the market they might want to capture.

JST · 03-07-2006, 09:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by blee

Well, every car can use more power. In the SVTF's particular case, though, I think you're right. It was a solid package in 2002 but was outgunned by about 30hp in 2005. Good thing they killed it after 2004.

I wonder if Ford really know who they want to buy their cars. If anyone finds their sedan commercials or ads interesting, it certainly isn't me...but I'm pretty squarely in the market they might want to capture.

Amen to that. It astonishes me that they keep re-upping with the same ad agency; their commercials are flat and boring at best, contradictory at worst. As Slate pointed out, the use of an iPod in a Fusion ad would be a lot more compelling IF YOU COULD ACTUALLY USE AN IPOD in a Ford product--but since they don't provide an aux in jack, you can't. The "Life in D" Fusion ads are trying to conjure some sort of excitment--but by emphasizing that you can't get a stick in the V6 Fusion, the ads are ill-targeted at those folks who buy, e.g., C/D, which is where the ads are appearing.

Honestly, it seems like Ford has the enthusiasm/talent to develop one product line at a time. Everything else just kind of...drifts. Why was the 96 Taurus around for 10 years, despite sucking golf balls through garden hoses? Why is the Ranger STILL around, despite the fact that the compact truck state of the art has moved about 3 million miles since it first came off the line (a Ford exec noted that the new Thai Ranger is much better than the one sold here, but that it is only for Southeast Asian markets, and there are no plans to update the current Ranger). Why did it take four years to replace the Contour? Why are Ford engines such crap, compared to everything the competition has?

Why?

It's a question the stockholders should be asking, and probably would be, if their last names didn't all start with "F" and end with "ord."

iateyourcheese · 03-07-2006, 10:43 AM

So both the GT car and the SVT division are getting the axe.

This indicates (IMO) that the bean counters are in full control. The GT was a great car for Ford not because of the money they made on it (they didn't, right) but the difficult to quantify boost it gave to their brand. Same with their SVT cars. Screw the loyal followers. Forget the auto enthusiasts!

03-07-2006, 07:08 AM	#1
Jason C Carmudgeon Join Date: Jul 2004 Carmudgeonly Ride: Invalid Carriage Location: Bay Area, CA Posts: 1,932	SVT RIP Team spiritless: Ford's SVT concept is history Quietly, Ford Motor Co. has been dismantling SVT — the Special Vehicle Team — and sources inside the company suggest that as of April 1, SVT as we've known it since 1992 will cease to exist. Just over a year ago, I wrote a column titled "SVT: A near-death experience?" It was more prophetic than I'd hoped. SVT, responsible for such products as the SVT Cobra Mustang, the SVT Lightning pickup, the SVT Contour and the SVT Focus, no longer has a dedicated marketing staff, a dedicated public relations staff, an independent engineering team, a press fleet or an events trailer. The dealer network that was painstakingly assembled among Ford's top dealers has crumbled, and some dealers reportedly are talking about a class-action lawsuit. SVT's longtime executive staff is gone, and, oddly enough, so are the Ford executives who developed and executed SVT's demise. Yes, the 2007 Mustang in Shelby Cobra trim is still coming, and yes, it was developed by SVT. And yes, it'll have SVT badges, because it's too late to take them off. But it is the last genuine SVT product. By "genuine," I mean it was developed by SVT, from concept to execution, then sold through the network of 600 dedicated Ford SVT dealers, who paid to be part of SVT, sent employees to SVT training and stocked SVT parts. Any future Ford products that carry an SVT badge, and it is unlikely any will, will be more of a "suspension tuned by SVT"-type vehicle. And the 7,500 Shelby Cobra Mustangs sold for 2007 — more, if they can get enough transmissions — will be offered to all 3,900 Ford dealers, not just SVT participants. SVT has had no dedicated products since 2004. A high-performance version of the new Sport Trac, called the Adrenalin, was shown at the New York auto show in March 2005. At a preview for journalists, SVT Director Hau Thai-Tang said that the Adrenalin "is going to turn the performance vehicle market upside down" when it goes on sale as a 2007 model. Then, last month, the Adrenalin was canceled as part of Ford's "Way Forward" restructuring campaign. "As part of our way forward, we are adjusting our product plan and decided not to produce the Sport Trac Adrenalin," said Ford spokesman Jon Harmon. The Ford GT supercar, which was developed largely by SVT engineers but was not called an SVT model, will end production later this year. If you check the official SVT Web site, there remains a glowing story about the Adrenalin, and when it's coming to market. "I guess we're a little behind on that Web site," said one Ford executive. Yes, I guess. This is the second such embarrassment for SVT: The company showed a concept version of a new 500-horsepower Lightning in 2003 and promised to produce it, but in late 2004, pulled the plug. SVT was founded in 1991 by Robert Rewey, Ford's vice president for marketing and sales, and Neil Ressler, Ford's chief technical officer. The idea was that SVT would consist of a small group of engineers, designers and marketing professionals who would work inside Ford, charged with building and selling high-performance versions of existing products. SVT also set up a separate dealer network, signing up Ford dealers who had an interest in selling performance products. In 1992, the first two SVT products were launched: the 1993 F-150 Lightning pickup and the 1993 Mustang Cobra. In 1997, the SVT Contour was introduced, and in 1999, the second-generation Lightning went in sale. In late 2001, the '02 SVT Focus went on sale. By 2004, when production of the Lightning, Mustang Cobra and SVT Focus ended, the company had sold about 145,000 SVT products. So what went wrong? It appears that the balls-out effort to build the Ford GT by the company's 100th anniversary took its toll on the SVT staff, slowing development of more mainstream future products, such as the next-generation Lightning, an updated SVT Focus and an SVT version of the Fusion. The Ford executives who oversaw SVT, group vice presidents Steve Lyons and Phil Martens, didn't give SVT the resources it needed to rebuild. Martens is gone; he's running Plastech, a company that supplies spoilers and scuff plates and other bits and pieces to the manufacturers. And Lyons retired March 1 to move to Arizona and run a Ford dealership. Reportedly Lyon's replacement, Cisco Codina, likes SVT, but it's too late. Why? Because SVT's top executives are gone, too. John Coletti, the bulldog engineer who was the heart and soul of SVT, retired at the end of 2004. Tom Scarpello, Coletti's counterpart on the marketing side, moved to Jaguar. Chris Theodore, a Ford vice president who spearheaded the Ford GT, is gone. This leaves the talented, personable Hau Thai-Tang to run SVT. Essentially, he's a captain without a ship. It's painful to see what has happened to SVT, especially when you look at the success of Chrysler's SRT program, which in many ways mirrors what SVT was. In the grand scheme of Ford's problems, botching SVT is a small one. But to enthusiasts, it speaks volumes. Nearly 10 years ago I was in Las Vegas, the first to drive the upcoming SVT Contour. John Coletti and I, en route to some all-you-can-eat buffet at a casino, were talking about GM's current strategy of hiring brand managers for each model. It was not a successful program, but I was playing devil's advocate. "Maybe it's a good thing," I told Coletti, "to have someone whose job it is to be excited about the Chevrolet Cavalier." Coletti thought for a moment. "But wouldn't it be better to just build cars that you didn't have to pay someone to be excited about?" Yes, John, it would. And you and your team always did. http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do...ticleId=109512

03-07-2006, 08:41 AM	#2
JST 195 Join Date: Oct 2003 Posts: 24,614	Whatever. The company botched every aspect of the SVT program from day one. The cars were great, as far as they went, but for limited production performance specials they simply didn't offer enough extra performance--and they were marketed badly (i.e., not marketed). It was, weirdly, a point of pride for a while among SVT folks that they did not advertise.

03-07-2006, 08:48 AM	#3
ff . Join Date: Mar 2004 Posts: 13,514	True that. So little advertising, to the point where they never seemed to draw much attention to themselves (that I noticed). Well, not completely true. You do/did hear a fair amount about the Mustang SVT. Beyond that, though...

03-07-2006, 09:20 AM	#4
blee Doctor Mudgeon Join Date: Oct 2003 Posts: 6,433	I don't think the problem was performance so much as awareness. I'm not sure how much money was actually spent on marketing, but it's pretty clear that it wasn't spent outside the very small realm of performance enthusiasts. For a while after I got my Focus, I used to stare at the person behind me at traffic lights. It was kind of entertaining to notice how many of them would squint and mouth the letters "S, V,....T?" to themselves or their passengers.

03-07-2006, 09:37 AM	#6
JST 195 Join Date: Oct 2003 Posts: 24,614	Expanding on my last a bit--as someone who's always had an attachment to Ford and Detroit, I have started to feel about Ford Motor the way I feel about the Lions. I root for the guys, and I'd really like them to succeed. But they've shot themselves in the foot for so long, and their management has been so unremitting its incompetence and so lacking in its ability to deliver for its fans/customers that I've just stopped watching.

03-07-2006, 10:43 AM	#10
iateyourcheese Nerd Join Date: Jan 2006 Carmudgeonly Ride: '87 M3, Subie FXT, Mazda CX-9 Location: Missouri loves company Posts: 884	So both the GT car and the SVT division are getting the axe. This indicates (IMO) that the bean counters are in full control. The GT was a great car for Ford not because of the money they made on it (they didn't, right) but the difficult to quantify boost it gave to their brand. Same with their SVT cars. Screw the loyal followers. Forget the auto enthusiasts!