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Mustang FR500 is Ford's "Ultimate" Performance Parts Car(Ford Motor Company press release - 03 November 1999) |
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Calling it "our ultimate performance parts project," Dan Davis, director, Ford Racing Technology, unveiled the Ford Mustang FR500 to media and industry officials here today at the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) Show. The FR500 is the result of a challenge from Davis to Ford Racing Technology engineers to "create the ultimate high-performance Mustang," while creating a showcase for current and future products available through the Ford Racing Performance Parts catalog. |
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"What we're revealing today is a performance parts story, wrapped up in a car," said Davis, who was joined in the unveiling by Ford Taurus NASCAR star and FR500 test driver Rusty Wallace. "We saw this as a great opportunity to demonstrate the engineering expertise at Ford Racing Technology and to energize our people by challenging them to show the world what they think would be 'their' best Mustang." Davis said the project included several key objectives, including an opportunity to broaden the line of Ford Racing performance parts for the 4.6-liter, 4V modular engine. This was an area that has lagged behind the performance parts program's long-time staple - parts for the 5.0-liter pushrod engine, which is no longer offered in the Mustang. "We decided to further that objective, along with several others," Davis said. "We wanted a car that would satisfy a Mustang enthusiast's dream checklist of performance modifications; a car that would be well engineered and very well balanced; and a performance benchmark to outperform the manual transmission Corvette. "Our interim goal with the FR500 was to get everything right, including its performance, and to have all the parts designed so that they would be reproducible at a reasonable cost. What we've done is take a lot of the racing knowledge we have here and integrated a lot of it into what is our version of the ultimate Mustang." Davis described the entire project as "a very big business experiment for us," and said Ford Racing Technology wasn't sure how many of the pieces on the FR500 would eventually end up in the Performance Parts catalog. "We will measure success by how many of the parts or systems end up being produced and offered for sale," Davis said. "Because that will mean that there's a strong demand for them. That end result will come about after feedback from media, suppliers and especially our customers," he said. "Once we do market research, we could end up producing just a few of the parts, or there could be enough of a demand that we could do a limited run of the car. The initial idea is to start offering parts as the market demands them."
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