Good news yesterday from Edmunds Inside Line: Hau Thai-Tang, the director of advanced product creation and the moribund SVT, has left to take over product development for Ford of Brazil.
He'll be remembered as the person who took the SVT product line from all-around performance vehicles (handling dynamics over power) to the ultimately self-defeating morass of morbidly-obese straight-line ego-driven muscledom. Granted, his budget was repeatedly cut, but he didn't help his company or retain SVT customers when he carelessly made public product promises followed by defensive retractions such as "We'll never appease those IRS snobs". Critical product features were cancelled; entire product product plans were set aside.
So good riddance, and a kick in the ass on the way out.
Now hopefully SVT can get:
- back to it's roots and core values (since its current mission is nothing more than a virtual team of subject matter specialists)
- budget to build all-around performance cars (handling dynamics over power) that showcase what company engineers are truly capable of accomplishing.
- product testing procedures to ensure future SVT-led products perform well in wider ranges of temperatures across a wider variety of climates (such as what we in Texas consider the norm) and environments (open track events). SVT has had a severe reliability issue that resulted in Cobras and Ford GTs that can't survive aggressive open track events (SVT On Track's own Ford GT repeatedly failed and garked it's fluid on many tracks across the country - in front of many fans - before finally being retired).
And, hopefully, Ford will:
- think twice about putting a defensive self-promoting stooge in charge of a product line that had earned an enthusiast following in both buyers and in the press.
- try (yet again) to understand the value to the company of mature multi-dimensional products designed for driving enthusiasts.
We've seen so many "golded ages" of performance products from Ford come and go in the past 20 years:
- Don Peterson and the original Mustang SVO ("form follows function")
- the (recently terminated) sponsorship of the Bondurant school (and the requirements for Ford Engineers to attend)
- the emphasis on all-around dynamics in the early SVT products (culminating in the promising but flawed 1999 Cobra)
- balanced vehicles such as the SVT Contour and Focus (even though the Focus was market-obsolete before it was delivered)
- the original good intentions behind the fatally flawed Ford GT
Will there ever be a performance product plan inside Ford that can sustain itself? Can Ford learn from it's mistakes?
