I think it was Proud Pony. If I remember correctly, he mentioned they were yelling to try to motivate people to work on the Mustang.

I guess you could argue the T bird was a 2 seater to compete with the vette. But thats what Cobra became. Still 4dr doesnt have the same thunder in the bird. What about Fairlane or even Interceptor that theyre using is a great name for the Sedan. If they havent already, i think they need to take a good look at the Falcon and the D2c and put the best of both into a Sedan. That would be CTS competition as Lincon Continental, Commodore competition as a Merc Cougar, and Impalla competition as a Ford Fairlane/Tbird.

 

They need to produce one for each Ford brand. With the Lincoln, they need to make it a STS competitor. Only give the car a 6spd auto, with either a 4.0L V6, 4.6L DOHC, or 5.8L and give it the interior it needs to make it competitive against Cadillac, Lexus, BMW, and Mercedes. They could take the Mercury and make it competitive against the CTS and lower end of the previous mentioned makes.

 

...

 

Didn't they also say it would add 100 pounds (and who wants to do that)?

Or do you consider that a smokescreen?

Speaking of 100 pounds, it seems to be true that the '07 GT is about that much heavier than the '06, as the only '07 test I've seen (in Jan '07 R&T magazine) has it at 3615.

Oh well....

 

Wasn't the structure stiffened, for the GT500, and the changes spread across all Mustangs?

 

think so.

 

I think an IRS would have added alittle cost, (certainly NOT the $5,000 which Caroll Shelby once claimed) and alittle weight, (100 lbs is excessive, IMO).

I think the real issues were engineering ones though. I think when push came to shove, Martens and his crew said screw it, we'll just go with a live axle and say the drag racers made us do it.

 

No, the guy who posted that definitely was not Proud.

BTW, where is Proud?

 

China?

 

I just saw one of his posts. He's home.

 

 

"Alittle cost and alittle weight"??

Glad to see us at least partially acknowledge there's a cost and weight penalty to IRS.

According to the person I spoke to awhile back, the issue was cost. Not $5,000, but certainly more than just a few hundred dollars. Weight would have added at least 150, and most likely 200 pounds (the assembly would likely weighed at least as much as the Cobra's).


The powers that be found that IRS ranked fairly low on the "must haves" list to Mustang buyers, so they took advantage of that to save some money. Another person I spoke to (the same one who hinted at the GT500's engine and indicated IRS would be part of the package back in 2003) mentioned weight as a concern. No one said anything about not being able to engineer it correctly.

I suspect if I contacted them they'd probally point to the MN12, and the DEW and the fact Mustang is based on the DEW if I asked them about not being able to correctly engineer an IRS for a car, and one particular person might take offense pointing out his group did it on a car that wasn't even designed for IRS, and they were adsorbed into the rest of Ford's engineering.

If engineering actually did have something to do with it, it was that IRS couldn't be done within the cost constraints Ford put on it, and in the case of the GT500, the issue was weight.

As what was pointed out to me at last year's Detroit show (yes, I broke Scott's rule about wandering around ) with IRS, the base GT500 would probally weigh over 4,000 pounds and that probally wouldn't have gone over well.

 

Actually, Ford is already on record, publicly stating that the live axle saved $300 per car over IRS.

Weight? I think that 100 lbs figure is overstated. That's even more than the reverse engineered, MN12 based (read as HEAVY), Rube Goldberg set-up added to the '03/'04 Cobra....which was around 90 lbs...and that's compared to the SN95's austere, light weight 4 link rear. So it's reasonable to conclude that efficiently engineering one from the get-go, for a specific package with an already heavier than SN95 rear suspension, might only add half of that weight change. Most probably even less than that.

 

Yeah, me too.

And I found myself taking a leak next to J Mays in the rest room. Not too many places that you can get access like that!

 

Well Charlie, I think you just blew away any auto exec access comparisons I could ever make..... unless I'm someday finding myself passing a spare roll to Lutz in the next stall !


Seriously though, What did you think of Mays?

I got to get into a pretty decent conversation with Mays (just him, me, & my son) at a Ford-Shelby event at Pebble Beach Concours year before last, and what took me aback was that he's so easy to talk to. Very, very down to earth guy. He's more likely to stand in the background (how I ended up talking to him) and watch everyone else.

He's also the only automobile designer to have his own exibit at a major Museum (LA) save for Raymond Loewry (both have industrial design experience far beyond automobiles). Though you wouldn't know it, J. Mays is a bit of a rock star in the industrial design world.

The only other auto exec I've ever met that was so easy to access was John Colletti (though he's by far more entertaining than any other exec I've ever met...in any business!).

It blew me away back when I 1st started writing when he actually returned my 1st call (which I certainly didn't expect). Then I found out that just about any Ford SVT owner who called or e-mailed him, he would return the call and answer the e-mail himself. That alone made me want to go out and buy a Cobra!