Hidden in nondescript, leased offices and a small shop in Allen Park, Mich., a handful of Ford engineers and executives design and market vehicles many consumers don’t know exist.
There’s no advertising budget. Their limited-production vehicles constitute a drop of oil in Ford’s huge barrel of profit.
But if the Special Vehicle Team can accomplish its mission, its small but skilled platoon will fight Ford’s image wars and earn respect for the company’s infantry grunts, the Tauruses and Explorers.
Formed in 1991, the Special Vehicle Team, or SVT, was conceived along the lines of BMW’s M Group. That group’s M3 and M5 performance cars sell in small numbers, but have boosted the automaker’s efforts to bill its vehicles as “the ultimate driving machine.”
Since affixing its first badges to high-performance versions of the Ford Mustang and F-150 pickup in 1993, SVT has sold about 85,000 cars and trucks, or about 10,000 each year. Compare that to 26.5 million in U.S. sales of the Ford brand since 1993.
But John Coletti, the SVT chief engineer who heads the staff of fewer than 30 employees, prefers numbers that have to do with horsepower and zero-to-60 m.p.h. times. SVT vehicles are out to demonstrate Ford’s design and engineering excellence, he says. Build that reputation, and it will trickle down to all the company’s products.
“Everything we do is about polishing the blue oval,” Coletti says, referring to Ford’s brand logo.
Most recently, SVT has buffed Ford’s image with the roughly $58,000 SVT Mustang Cobra R, a street-legal yet race-ready Mustang with 385 horsepower. Only 300 copies rolled down the assembly line last March at Ford’s Dearborn Mustang plant.
For the first time, Ford had a Mustang that could hang with General Motors’ and Chrysler’s performance icons, the Chevrolet Corvette and Dodge Viper.
The performance numbers haven’t always been so kind.
Two years ago, the team suffered a public relations debacle equivalent to blowing an engine in a high-stakes drag race. Its 1999 SVT Mustang Cobra was widely promised as having an engine that produced 320 horsepower. Finally, enthusiasts thought, a Mustang that could truly take on Corvettes.
Buyers were dismayed to find their Cobras were producing suspiciously less power and performance than advertised. An embarrassed SVT found that flaws in the manufacturing processes for intake and exhaust systems strangled the engine’s power.
The group has found and fixed 95 percent of nearly 8,100 1999 Cobra coupes and convertibles, tracking down second- and third-hand owners to address the power shortage.
The problem forced the team to cancel 2000 Cobra production.
“That really hurt momentum and hurt the brand,” says Tom Scarpello, SVT marketing chief. “But we’ve worked hard to bring back the Cobra with no repeat of the issue from 1999.”
In addition to BMW’s M-Group, Mercedes’ AMG arm has created powerful versions of nearly every car in Mercedes’ lineup. Yet Ford’s SVT doesn’t have a true domestic counterpart at General Motors Corp. or the Chrysler Group. Oldsmobile Special Engineering created hotted-up versions of some Oldsmobile models, but the GM brand’s impending demise has aborted any production plans.
