If you’ve been paying any attention, then you already know that Ford has an impossibly tremendous presence at the 2015 Detroit Auto Show, pulling the veil off of not one – but three – high performance, shock-inducing vehicles. While it may not have been clear before why the Blue Oval would whip out every big gun in its arsenal for a single auto show, perhaps it is this; the automaker is introducing a new brand, aptly named “Ford Performance.”
Er, maybe “new brand” is the wrong phrasing. In truth, Ford Performance simply represents a unification of the automaker’s various performance badges: Ford Racing, SVT, Team RS, Shelby, and ST. At the helm is former Chief Engineer for the 2015 Ford Mustang Dave Pericak, with whom Automobile magazine recently had the opportunity to catch up.
According to Automobile‘s conversation with the new Ford Performance Director, the ST, Shelby, SVT (Special Vehicle Team), etc. badges are not going anywhere; they have a lot of valuable equity that Ford Performance would be remiss to lose out on. But, the orchestration and pre-production of vehicles bearing any of these badges will be overseen by this new, singular Ford Performance unit.
Also, while it’s important to note that the new Ford GT especially is still very much in the pre-production stage, Mr. Pericak told the magazine that we can expect twelve new Ford Performance vehicles on the road by 2020. That’s twelve high performance, niche-market cars, in five years. We’re having trouble just figuring out what all of these could possibly be (Ford GT, Raptor, GT350/R, Focus RS, Fiesta RS…)
Outside of these details, Dave Pericak was laconic on the questions that we were really itching to have answered, such as what Ford Performance’s racing efforts will look like, what (beyond carbon fiber) the new brand will introduce in the near future, etc. But c’est la vie.
And we can’t be too upset with him; look at all the eye candy he’s given us.
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