but keep in mind, there are a great many people who simply dont care about fuel economy...like me.

and i know, not everyone is lucky enough to only put 20 miles on their car per month, but alot of people who are looking for new cars, especially something with some *****, have more than one car, like me with the stratus...

 

To 94rt10ohio,The Ford SVT line is DONE! This is the last SVT Shelby!


Team spiritless: Ford's SVT concept is history
Date posted: 03-06-2006


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 *****-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.

 

That is fine, but also re-inforces my comment. When you are loosing $$ and getting pressure you have to cut overhead and the thrills are the first to go to help cut the overhead. A trimmed SRT division is coming....

 

Looks are opinion, a change may make it so you like them and I do not. WHich would net DC zero.

DC could cut costs by eliminating the worthless 4.7. 4, V6 or Hemi. The Hemi with MDS gets better gas milage than the 4.7, so why keep it around? Cut it out and the overhead of keeping multiple engines and designing improvements on a useless engine. Make the Hemi the standard for vehicles that come with V8s and an option on V6 equiped cars and trucks. They could take the overhead savings and pump in into your idea of a fuel efficient engine, but keep it out of the current cars. Build a small and light car, otherwise you end up with a heavy car with a little engine, resulting in poor performance and the engine getting fewer MPGs that it could. You simply can not build a more efficient engine and dump it into their current bigger sedans. Could you build a efficient engine to power the bigger cars, sure, but you are probably putting some kind of Turbo/SC on it. Which will push the purchase price up. The issue with that? People looking for fuel efficient cars are generally people who are counting pennies, so they do not want a higher priced car. These are all thoughts running through the heads of people making the decesions. It is not black and white by any means.

The issue is to much competition resulting in a buyers market, that is black and white. When almost all automakers are loosing money it is not the products they are selling, it is the lack of buyers to unit ratios. As I mentioned this will continue until someone disappears.

Something similar happend in the mid to late 70s and into the 80s. The auto industry was down. America became "MPG" concious due to a gas shortage. What happened? A very bad period of US autos for over 10 years, take a look at some of the cars from 75-the mid 80s, yikes!! The ironic part is, once this was over and we went back to not caring so much about MPG, it allowed the other auto makers into the market. This is what created the issue we have today.... To many auto makers building cars and now all of them are fighting to keep their heads above water.

There is also another twist, that being new government regs. Automakers are forced to pump money into design changes to meet new government regs. So overhead costs are allocated to satisfy the government, as a result less money for other projects, especially when inventories are selling only after reducing the price to near no profit margin.

I think we can all say, it is a mess. The issues go very deep.

 

First of all the 4.7 gets the same mpg as a hemi with mds. But I have yet to see someone with a mds hemi ram get the same as a 4.7 ram. Right now the 4.7 is focused for the dakota. DC will not redesign the front suspension to fit the hemi. It is far too costly. Only one V8? One size fits all does not work. Alot of people, especially those that actually use their trucks for work related purposes will choose the lower cost of the 4.7. If you are buying a fleet of 50 trucks, thats a 50 grand difference. Thats huge. Also if e-85 takes off, the hemi as of right now can not run off of it. So far they have not been able to get the hemi to respond well to e-85. There is a significant power loss.

Chrysler has several issues right now, as do the other two. The main problem is the stupidity of the American public. Look at a JD power report, the differences between the domestics, and the foreign makes is small at best. But Americans seem to think their junk is far better than our junk. I have a friend thats a honda nut. He has an accord with 195000 on it. He uses that as his example. Problem is he treats it like gold. Guess what, you treat any car like gold and they will last forever. Import owners take far better care of their cars than domestics. They are told to keep fantastic maintenance on their cars and they will go forever. Which often is valid. But if they were to take care of a domestic the same way they last just about as long. Plus domestics are usually cheaper due to all of the incentives.

Americans need to wake up and smell the coffee. Not only does buying domestics keep the big three working, but there are hundreds of thousands that work for stateside suppliers that depend on the big three.

Yes the imports are building some of their products here now, but they use no stateside suppliers. Almost all of their parts come from japan. The reason why they are building plants here is for PR reasons. Also helps out in the tariff dept.

Chrysler needs to due several things to turn around.

1. Be a leader instead of a follower. Be the first to the party instead of the last.(Aspen,Commander)

2. More technology. If you really look at a ram(features and options) its very crude compared to a Chevy or a ford. I mean good grief I still can't get a second gear start for crying out loud!

3. Drop the compass. Its ugly, useless, and taking away from caliber production.

4. More mpg out of the entire line.

5. Caliber highway mpg is 30 with a 2.0 auto. Grand Caravan highway mpg is 25 with a 3.8 auto. Whats wrong with this picture? Hey you get half the car with half the engine and only get 5 more mpg? Sounds like a deal!

6. Ram is getting long in the tooth. Waiting too long for a redesign.

7. Dakota should have been refreshed for this year, not next year as scheduled.

8. 4.7 needs more power, and more mpg. GM's 4.8 mops the floor with a 4.7.

9. 2.7, and 3.7 needs to go away. How many V6's do we need? Stick with 3.5, 3.8, 4.0.

10. Durango... Make it a true full size to compete with the big boys.

11. Trim down srt line. Make it more exclusive. Should not be having a "clearance" sale on srts.

12. Bump up challenger release date.

13. Make a respectable FWD coupe. No disrespect to current stratus owners, but how about a 2 door avenger with a 3.5, 4.0, or a 2.4 turbo in it!

14. Let the customer build the vehicle his/her own way. Too many "option packages" right now. If I want to have leather seats, but not power seats let me order it that way. Should not have to pay 2000 for an equipment group to get radio controls in the steering wheel.

15. Slow line speeds down in the plants. Lets get the quality over quantity thought process going. Currently its the opposite. Currently its overload the line worker to save a buck. Instead it should be ease the line worker so that way he can do a quality job every time, and save big money in warranty costs. But these pea brains only look quarter to quarter, not down the long road.

Sorry for the rant, but I am a second gen Chrysler worker. I love this company to the core. But its killing me to see it run into the ground by the incompetence of the current leadership. I'm also getting tired of the top squeezing the bottom to save costs for mismanagement from the top. These guys get paid big bucks to steer this company in the right direction, and they are failing, but want us to pay the price for it.

I want to go to work everyday and be proud of what I build. Even if I was working(Currently in job bank) I can't say that. I see way too much management approved mistakes go out the door. Its very sad.

 

You would not have one V8 choice. Hemi in 5.7, 6.1 flavors, and they could easily design a smaller Hemi. This way most of the parts are interchangable. New enhancements would then hit all V8 engines hense less overhead. Do you really think the Hemi will not be redesigned to use E-85? Of course it will, but this is just another example of why having two very different V8 engines is bad. They have to pump money into the deisgn of both engines! Waste of money! Oh, and not not bitch about MPG, but the MDS Hemi is rated at better MPG highway than the 4.7, 1 MPG City is the same as your stated. As for the Dakota, you wanted a refresh anyhow and in my opinion the Dakota would be liked better if they had the option to put a Hemi in it, V6 available.

It is a simple business model, with respect to the one V8 line. Southwest airlines employs the same model. They only buy 737 planes. The effect is less money to maintain their fleet. Ford also employed the same idea in the 30s, they ended up building an empire.

 

Overall the lineups are fairly solid, but there are to many cut corners, poor fuel economy, components that have no point in existing anymore, crappy warranties, and no incentives on cars people actualy buy.

Corner cuts for example, a $30-38k Charger/Magnum R/T has a prop rod for the hood and no glovebox light, I mean come on, my $13k 98 neon had a glovebox light and most cars in the mid 20's have gas struts on the hoods, the worst part is they did have them originaly (my 05 magnum RT has gas struts) 06 and on went to prop rods while increasing the price.

Then we have poor fuel economy, not everything, the larger cars/trucks are more or less on par but the smaller cars suck, like a Caliber R/T with it's little put-put 2.4L and a CVT for better fuel economy is rated at 26MPG highway, my Magnum RT with a 5.7 hemi and a standard 5 speed auto transmision is rated at 25MPG highway, and I do get it, i've gotten 26 on long trips actualy, you look at the compition and their small cars are up as high as 40MPG highway, the best compact we have is 32 highway and not even an auto avaliable, and it's not just the japanese cars either, even chevy beats out Chrysler there, their 2.4L 4 cylinder which puts out pretty much the same hp is getting 30-34 highway in their compact cars.

Next we have components that have no reason in existing, namely the 4.7L which is completely worthless, it at best only matches the 5.7L w/MDS for fuel economy, in some cases it's worse, it produces far less power, and it costs more to build, it needs to be scrapped, if they need an intermediate engine power wise use the 4.0L v6 from the Nitro, but an intermediate engine is pointless if it has worse/equal fuel economy, more expensive to build, and much less power than the larger engine. Also they need to eliminate one of the 4 cylidiner "world engines", probably the 2.0L, the 1.8L and 2.4L aren't that far apart power wise in the first place, but definatly not far enough to have another engine inbetween. Additionaly the 3.3L and 3.8L from the Caravan should be dropped and replaced with other existing engines around the same power, 3.5L is +35hp / +5lb.-ft from the 3.8L, the 2.7L is +10hp / -20lb.-ft from the 3.3L.

Then we have warranties, 3/36 is crap, I can buy an el-chepo hyundi and get a 5/60 bumper to bumper with a 10/100 drivetrain, it costs around $1k to exend our warranty an extra 2 years 24k miles to match that, and for under $1k you can extend the hyundi another 5 years 40k miles to 10/100 bumper to bumper.

And finaly no incentives for for vehicles people would actualy buy, seriously, I don't care if they put a 6k incentive on the Dakota, the new one sucks and is a downgrade from the old one and most people agree on that, however even only a 2k incentive on say a Charger or Magnum would get them a lot more sales.

 

^Good post. I agree with it all.
The engines: We have a disagreement of sorts going on in the Dakota forum. Some people (such as me) say, "Yea, the 4.7L is the only V-8 in the midsize class, but, than again, competitors 4.0L V6 engines are closing in fast." And other peoples comebacks are always "Yea, well, we've still got like some more torque than the others, and... yea." The 4.7L either needs to be given a lot more power, or needs to be scrapped and replaced with a whole new engine, as you, and others have said.

Fuel mileage: Peoples excuse is always, "Well, the differance is, Dodge got's power, and if you want power, you can't have good fuel mileage" and thats just not correct. If they made things the correct way, you can have the best of both worlds, and a lot of (especailly foreign) competitors are showing us this.
Another kinda-true, but also common misconception is "you can't have a smaller engine in a bigger vehicle and get good mileage." Thats what everyone says about V6 powered Dakotas (its a fact, the V6 gets about the same mileage as the V8 but has less power). Something just ain't right there.

Example: the Dodge Sprinter is a competetor with the Chevy Express and Ford E-Series. The Sprinter has a small (2.7L I5) diesel motor, and averages in the high 20's. It also has more cargo capacity and is taller than the Express and E-series. It also weighs the same, and can haul (not tow, however) about the same amount. The E-series and Express have V8 gassers that get, if lucky, 15MPG.
Spinter: smaller engines, less power. 25+ MPG
E-series and Express: bigger engines, more power, 15-MPG.
Point out aboe where smaller, less powerfull engines get worse mileage please.
In my mind (while I'll never go and buy one for myself) the Sprinter was done right. It won't win any drag races, but it does its job well.

 

I completely agree with almost all of this... Except maybe one or two things, and add in that we need to stop making everything blocky and bulky...

 

I just looked at two window stickers for 07 rams 4x4, 4.7 14 city, 18 highway. 5.7 14 city, 18 highway. Maybe it just changed? I don't know, and don't really care. The 6.1 is not a high production engine. It cost way too much to mass produce it.
The real reason Chrysler likes the 4.7 is cost. Yes it does cost a very little bit more to produce, but warranty cost are much better than the hemi. So in the long run its cheaper.

The 5.7 is actually based off of the 4.7. Even though the parts are not interchangeable, they are in fact very similar. The three main reasons for the 100 horse difference are...

1. More Displacement.

2. Three valves per cylinder, instead of two.

3. Two spark plugs per cylinder, instead of one.

The main reasons I have heard why the hemi is not testing well with e-85 are the two plugs per cly aspect. the second plug loses effectiveness with e-85. They tried just using the same conversion as with the 4.7, but basically lost the second plug, and the power therein.

Lasly not sure if using the failing airline industry as a model is the way to go!

Joe