You have hopefully been doing your reading on all the Ford GT issues... many have wound up in the press over the past several months. There are currently as many as 8 fixes being performed under service by Ford dealers on every Ford GT built before February... the production line was shut down for several weeks while some more-recently major fixes were designed and incorporated into production. IMHO, all of them are fundamentally due to poor engineering and rushed or partial testing on SVE's part.
Some are minor, such as a seat belt that chaffs (but is still required to be fixed because of legal ramifications). Some are irritants such as a module that eventually drains the battery (same issue my '03 Cobra had, and the same part). Apparently the design folks for these two simple parts are all new to their job...?
And then there are the major issues. Showstoppers. Dangerous?
1) Ford issued a rare "do not drive" to all current owners of the Ford GT (they were told not to drive their cars, and that the cars would be picked up by transporters because they could not be driven to the dealership) because the control arms could break. This actually happened on a test car - although well after production and delivery had been in progress. Ford is replacing all 8 control arms with newly designed forged arms manufactured by Roush, rather than the original arms which utilized a casting process that is commonplace elsewhere but new to Ford and it's (former) supplier Citation Corp. The control arms are shipped in a foot-locker sized box, all nicely wrapped, directly from Ford. The dealer charges back Ford $5000 for the cost of the these particular parts.
2) The fuel tank - a revolutionary new design, had to be replaced. This was a design issue, not a manufacturing issue. (note that Ford has had other recent fuel tank issues - on the new 2005 Mustang and also on the existing LS and T-Bird cars).
3) The rear main seal of the engine leaks. The replacement is absolutely absurd, no doubt borrowed directly from Chevy. Instead of fixing the problem, a speedi-sleeve is put on to stop the leak. Speedi-sleeves are typically used in 80k mile chevys to stop their notorious leaks too. What a great image.
The total chargeback to Ford by a dealer averages $13,900 for the purchase and installation of these parts.
Never mind that the profit plan for this car has been dealt a severe blow... leading to ramifications for all future programs similar to this one.
The big question is: what the heck went wrong here? This is a car that SVE originally bragged about: that it revolutionized Ford design and manufacturing, that it was the "pace car for the company", and that it would be out in a super-short 24 months. Instead, it took more than 3 years, now it's been recalled multiple times, and the "pace car for the company" marketing idea has been dropped (before somebody notices that it truly is the pace car for the company - or at least SVE). And, the big shake-up at SVE recently may well indeed be a direct result of this very expensive screw-up - as well as a continuing history of prior SVE recalls (which all 4 of my own Cobras have suffered from).
The next question is - how long can Ford tolerate this kind of expense? Granted, it's a small drop in the bucket given the other even larger recalls - such as 900,000+++ trucks because of a cruise control design flaw. And a certain amount of dirty laundry can be tolerated because of the halo effect SVT has on the rest of the product line-up. But the profit plan for the Ford GT is probably in tatters, not counting re-use of it's technology in possible future variants (GR-1?). The only reason a product exists in the first place is because it had a profit plan.
Corporate management is all about the bottom line, if it can't be exactly measured and managed then it's a candidate for a major change. One change, I suspect, is the recent shake-up at SVE... the former leader has (been?) retired, the SVT spin meister suddenly left (the same guy who told us that binary-value temp and pressure gauges were all that were needed), a large reorganization has taken place. Most of the people who led certain troublesome aspects of former SVE programs have rotated out.
Big concerns for those of us who may or may not remain SVT customers. Are there still ramifications to the upcoming SVE programs - the Shelby and the Sport Trac Adrenalin (which uses an updated but slightly dumbed down Cobra engine)? Will the products be delivered with fewer major issues; will they suffer fewer major issues after a year of use?
Certainly the fact that SVE is now supposedly more fully integrated to programs in their earlier stages (rather than band-aiding the car later) is a good change. The implication there is that testing of SVE specifics will be more integrated into the overall engineering and testing plan, instead of only being subjected to a small testing program later that skips some of the more rigid quality and endurance testing on the apparent assumption that a certain degree of systems testing assurance has been inherited from the base car. There are also checks and balances in the later phases of production that ensure that what was engineered is indeed what is being built and delivered - a step that SVE has notoriously missed several times (including the '99 Cobra intake/exhaust and the '03 4V head debacles) in the past.
So will we see better SVT (and SVT-delivered) products in the future? Only time will tell for sure... but I am still concerned. All I see in the recent announcements is a rolling billboard of ego-supporting torque and stripes. I don't see anything about real engineering. SVT has a way of promoting a certain image of a product, far beyond what it can actually deliver. "Gee look at the stripes, cubes, and stick axle" is becoming the marketing by-words and the image for the car. Engineering is no longer the focus, as it used to be at SVE.
It's a fact of life that issues, bugs, transgressions, and missed engineering only become apparent after real owners have put real miles on them - the hype of initial show car announcements and magazine tests doesn't mean a thing in the real world usage or as a real world measurement of engineering capability and prowess. All of these types of issues are a fact of SVT ownership - be it Ford GT or Cobra. The group that was supposed to "get it right" inside Ford hasn't delivered the kind of engineering quality that Ford desperately needs.
Will there ever be a change for the better? Will SVE ever get it *truly* right?
Some are minor, such as a seat belt that chaffs (but is still required to be fixed because of legal ramifications). Some are irritants such as a module that eventually drains the battery (same issue my '03 Cobra had, and the same part). Apparently the design folks for these two simple parts are all new to their job...?
And then there are the major issues. Showstoppers. Dangerous?
1) Ford issued a rare "do not drive" to all current owners of the Ford GT (they were told not to drive their cars, and that the cars would be picked up by transporters because they could not be driven to the dealership) because the control arms could break. This actually happened on a test car - although well after production and delivery had been in progress. Ford is replacing all 8 control arms with newly designed forged arms manufactured by Roush, rather than the original arms which utilized a casting process that is commonplace elsewhere but new to Ford and it's (former) supplier Citation Corp. The control arms are shipped in a foot-locker sized box, all nicely wrapped, directly from Ford. The dealer charges back Ford $5000 for the cost of the these particular parts.
2) The fuel tank - a revolutionary new design, had to be replaced. This was a design issue, not a manufacturing issue. (note that Ford has had other recent fuel tank issues - on the new 2005 Mustang and also on the existing LS and T-Bird cars).
3) The rear main seal of the engine leaks. The replacement is absolutely absurd, no doubt borrowed directly from Chevy. Instead of fixing the problem, a speedi-sleeve is put on to stop the leak. Speedi-sleeves are typically used in 80k mile chevys to stop their notorious leaks too. What a great image.
The total chargeback to Ford by a dealer averages $13,900 for the purchase and installation of these parts.
Never mind that the profit plan for this car has been dealt a severe blow... leading to ramifications for all future programs similar to this one.
The big question is: what the heck went wrong here? This is a car that SVE originally bragged about: that it revolutionized Ford design and manufacturing, that it was the "pace car for the company", and that it would be out in a super-short 24 months. Instead, it took more than 3 years, now it's been recalled multiple times, and the "pace car for the company" marketing idea has been dropped (before somebody notices that it truly is the pace car for the company - or at least SVE). And, the big shake-up at SVE recently may well indeed be a direct result of this very expensive screw-up - as well as a continuing history of prior SVE recalls (which all 4 of my own Cobras have suffered from).
The next question is - how long can Ford tolerate this kind of expense? Granted, it's a small drop in the bucket given the other even larger recalls - such as 900,000+++ trucks because of a cruise control design flaw. And a certain amount of dirty laundry can be tolerated because of the halo effect SVT has on the rest of the product line-up. But the profit plan for the Ford GT is probably in tatters, not counting re-use of it's technology in possible future variants (GR-1?). The only reason a product exists in the first place is because it had a profit plan.
Corporate management is all about the bottom line, if it can't be exactly measured and managed then it's a candidate for a major change. One change, I suspect, is the recent shake-up at SVE... the former leader has (been?) retired, the SVT spin meister suddenly left (the same guy who told us that binary-value temp and pressure gauges were all that were needed), a large reorganization has taken place. Most of the people who led certain troublesome aspects of former SVE programs have rotated out.
Big concerns for those of us who may or may not remain SVT customers. Are there still ramifications to the upcoming SVE programs - the Shelby and the Sport Trac Adrenalin (which uses an updated but slightly dumbed down Cobra engine)? Will the products be delivered with fewer major issues; will they suffer fewer major issues after a year of use?
Certainly the fact that SVE is now supposedly more fully integrated to programs in their earlier stages (rather than band-aiding the car later) is a good change. The implication there is that testing of SVE specifics will be more integrated into the overall engineering and testing plan, instead of only being subjected to a small testing program later that skips some of the more rigid quality and endurance testing on the apparent assumption that a certain degree of systems testing assurance has been inherited from the base car. There are also checks and balances in the later phases of production that ensure that what was engineered is indeed what is being built and delivered - a step that SVE has notoriously missed several times (including the '99 Cobra intake/exhaust and the '03 4V head debacles) in the past.
So will we see better SVT (and SVT-delivered) products in the future? Only time will tell for sure... but I am still concerned. All I see in the recent announcements is a rolling billboard of ego-supporting torque and stripes. I don't see anything about real engineering. SVT has a way of promoting a certain image of a product, far beyond what it can actually deliver. "Gee look at the stripes, cubes, and stick axle" is becoming the marketing by-words and the image for the car. Engineering is no longer the focus, as it used to be at SVE.
It's a fact of life that issues, bugs, transgressions, and missed engineering only become apparent after real owners have put real miles on them - the hype of initial show car announcements and magazine tests doesn't mean a thing in the real world usage or as a real world measurement of engineering capability and prowess. All of these types of issues are a fact of SVT ownership - be it Ford GT or Cobra. The group that was supposed to "get it right" inside Ford hasn't delivered the kind of engineering quality that Ford desperately needs.
Will there ever be a change for the better? Will SVE ever get it *truly* right?
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Yeah I guess when you pay that kind of money recalls are not cool.:shrug:
