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2015 Ford Mustang Secret Feature

22K views 99 replies 40 participants last post by  jry 
#1 ·
#40 ·
That's like saying Natural Ice is better than Pilsner Urquell because it has more alcohol content. I'm sure there is a Civic out there with nitrous and 40 tread wear tires that makes those numbers, but qualitative chassis dynamics and engineering are what separates the OEMs; look at the integration required for an e-diff vs. a gimmick like burnout control. If you're an engineer with a pulse, sitting in Dearborn programming a ghetto feature like this can't feel good when you look across town and see what Jim Mero is doing.
 
#45 ·
Sears, chasing the Montgomery-Wards marketing model?
 
#46 ·
We liked Monkey Ward and shopped there a lot. Clothes, furniture mainly. Still have a recliner set I bought there around 1995.

We were sorry to see Monkey go out of bidness. Wish they were still around. Sears, OTOH, I would not miss. Their help is mostly sad sacks, and management must be a bunch of imbeciles.

But what would I know? Just because there are more cars in the Walrus World parking lot at 3am on any given day than at high noon on Saturday after payday at Sears...
 
#48 · (Edited)
Are you trying to say that the Mustang has a better chassis than an M3? That's a really tough sell and I think you would be very much in the minority with that opinion. Randy's narrative mentioned things he liked about both, such as the damping in the BMW and the Mustang's neutral chassis setup. But that's on a track, where the Mustang is better suited to hide it's live axle; in the real world the car will show it's lack of fluidity and become easily upset, plus I don't think it will ride as well. In an all-round chassis sense, the BMW is another league, all though Mustang is a fun toy and had really good steering until EPS.

But my original point was that Ford needs more than this embarrassment they call burnout control. They're going in with S550, which may or may not be well-sorted it's first time out, against the 6th gen Alpha Camaro. Given Fords relative lack of RWD expertise, and that Alpha is already the best all-around chassis in the world, they will need all the help possible as GM has a basket of goodies at it's disposal, e.g. e-diff, MR, PTM, etc., in addition to having a much bigger chassis development brain trust.

Case in point, this is Ford's current deficit, and this is sans MR and e-diff, which the 6th gen will certainly have in some form.

 
#49 ·
Are you trying to say that the Mustang has a better chassis than an M3? That's a really tough sell and I think you would be very much in the minority with that opinion. Randy's narrative mentioned things he liked about both, such as the damping in the BMW and the Mustang's neutral chassis setup. But that's on a track, where the Mustang is better suited to hide it's live axle; in the real world the car will show it's lack of fluidity and become easily upset, plus I don't think it will ride as well. In an all-round chassis sense, the BMW is another league, all though Mustang is a fun toy and had really good steering until EPS.

But my original point was that Ford needs more than this embarrassment they call burnout control. They're going in with S550, which may or may not be well-sorted it's first time out, against the 6th gen Alpha Camaro. Given Fords relative lack of RWD expertise, and that Alpha is already the best all-around chassis in the world, they will need all the help possible as GM has a basket of goodies at it's disposal, e.g. e-diff, MR, PTM, etc., in addition to having a much bigger chassis development brain trust.

Case in point, this is Ford's current deficit, and this is sans MR and e-diff, which the 6th gen will certainly have in some form.
Still going on about this?

Ford has little RWD expertise? Who do you think designed and engineered all of these?











All of that intellectual property remains in Dearborn, as well as quite a few of the engineers, all of which will come in handy when the time comes.
 
#50 · (Edited)
The vast majority of those guys live in Coventry, and DEW98 was developed in the late 90s, which was a fine chassis architecturally but the nitty-gritty tuning is a Ford weakness with which Jag guys won't be around to assuage. The core of European folks who made the Focus chassis great would be an asset, but it seems like S550 is a NA baby.
 
#62 · (Edited)
Actually, while that storyline has proven to be a popular internet wives tale, a wives tale is exactly what it is. In fact, when Ford decided to rid themselves of JLR, Aston Martin, Volvo, and even their interest in Mazda those decisions were made easier, in no small part, by the fact that every last one of those brands proved a disappointment over time from a perspective of inherent technical and engineering ability.

Back when Ford bought Jaguar to say their expectations relative to what they were getting were dashed once they really had control of the company would be an understatement. Someone within the Ford organization, I can't remember who, once compared the initial engineering and manufacturing ability of Jaguar immediately post acquisition to something you would have expected to see in the 1950's. They weren't just incapable of designing and manufacturing a world class car at that point, they were very nearly incapable of designing and manufacturing a car at all. To varying degrees that initial disappointment would replay again and again with the rest of the brands, each of them proving less capable in those regards than Ford had initially hoped.

The ability to fine tune and perfect on a level which you insinuate Ford can't approach, and which you likewise insinuate left the company when JLR and crew were dropped, was 100% developed by FoMoCo after the purchase of those brands by necessity to turn them each into something resembling a respectable player. The notion that the company that developed all of that tech and all of those platforms has somehow now forgotten how to do the same just seems odd to me. But the internet invariably thinks what it will, often in spite of reality.
 
#79 ·
I don't know what your point is exactly with that last sentence, all I'm saying is that institutional knowledge and practice count, and I know you wouldn't disagree with that because you've said so yourself. How this relates to a 6G Camaro and a 6G Mustang, or a serious Lincoln entry, is that an Alpha Camaro is on it's third go round, and Ford hasn't had the repetition, or depth of experience, from making CTS's and ATS's, respectively. Also, the worked-in-the-industry-card usually leaves me unpersuaded unless you worked at Ford or Goldman or JLR during the transfer and can demonstrates such, i.e. don't BS a BSer.
 
#80 · (Edited)
Feel free to question or disregard my background at your leisure, I speak from experience because that is what I have to rely on. I'll refrain from from getting specific about any recent positions and appointments, because were my employer to find out that I were discussing my work on a forum they would likely frown upon it, which is why I don't. My motive here is to keep discussion about the industry, and how it works, at least within the basic bounds of accuracy.....and the reality here is that we ventured well outside of those bounds some time ago. You are effectively arguing that the men who rebuilt what is currently the fiscally strongest U.S. automaker were also naive enough to send almost all if not all of their most talented engineering and development employees to an Indian firm for the sum total of 2.3 billion dollars. Let me defuse that argument with one sentence. If Ford were willing to sell the amount of brain-power and ability which you insinuate that they did for anything like that amount of money they would have had a lot better offers than that and from a great many more suitors. That is, of course, unless you are insinuating that absolutely everybody in the automotive industry came down with a rather hefty dose of stupidity during that same time frame.

I think you've allowed wishful thinking to run away with you here. With that, I'll grant you the last word.
 
#81 ·
If you're insinuating that Tata came up with the F-type and the coming XS with the same guys who brought us the Nano because Ford so gutted JLR, then I think you're the one who's well-versed in wishful thinking. But speaking of hefty doses of stupidity, and the reason I'm not buying your "It defies common sense for guys like Mulally to let all that talent walk away" argument, is looking at how Ford let billions of profits walk away:

Daily Mail 25-09-2012 said:
‘Ford made mistakes, but towards the end it was finally getting it right,’ says motor industry expert Professor David Bailey of Coventry University.

‘Jaguar was just starting to turn a profit. But Ford had run out of money, and it wanted out.

'There were some great products in the pipeline, the result of some heavy Ford investment. Someone was going to pick it up cheaply.’


In 2010-11, JLR made as much profit – £1.1 billion – as it cost Tata to buy just three years earlier, and around £400 million more in the year just ended

In 2003, JLR sold just 431 cars in China. In the last financial year it sold an astonishing 51,000 there, up 76 per cent on the year before, and by the end of this year China is likely to overtake the United States as the firm’s biggest market.
 
#82 ·
Yeah, let's not get started on Tata's fantasy claims of "profits" from JLR... now we're talking about wishful thinking.

Ford's sale of JLR wasn't so much about "needing" the $2.3B, but rather, avoiding the forthcoming losses related to necessary capital investments to make JLR a viable division. All of which, tied back to Ford's original financial restructuring in 2006, which had a strategic restructuring component of "getting back to basics". Ford could pick one mainstream brand (Ford, obviously), and one or two luxury brands, which came down to JLR vs Lincoln-Mercury. Whether you believe it or not, when the numbers were ran, every scenario had Lincoln-Mercury coming out ahead in ROI over the five, ten, and twenty year horizon, with less risk, less capital tied up, and better organizational integration with Ford.
 
#84 ·
A professor from Jaguar's hometown college? You might have a point, seeing as Brits don't have a reputation for having an unrealistically positive appraisal of their national brands.

Jaguar Land Rover is going to make a ton of money down the road, if they last another 10 or 15 years. China is the opportunity for growth paired with cutting out most of the costs by moving R&D/engineering and production to India. Ford could never get away with doing so, since they have such a vested interest in keeping the British market happy. If you thought the end of Holden caused an uproar, wait until Tata triumphantly closes the last British plant. Since most of the sales will be in China, the backlash will have little impact on their bottom line.
 
#89 ·
Well it can't be line like, the brat had hill control in 1980. The photo looks like a 2 door fusion. My hyundai has full motion movement on the dash a globe spins on the hybrid . So no ponies galloping in the dash. How about a night rider car. Since it looks a little like a Austin Martin vantage. Voice. Control Kitt start, Kitt drive well you get my idea no mirrors video cams the whole dash. Just my 2 cents

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