BRIAN WOLFE RATIONALIZES HARD TIMES AT FORD RACING

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Perhaps we shouldn't throw rocks at Ford Motor Company's factory racing efforts. After all, we could someday be repeating the disasterous mistake of November 1970, when Lee Iacocca, Red Poling, and Henry Ford II and their anti-Knudsen hatchetmen killed off virtually the entire "Total Performance" motorsports program.

Still, to see a solid, hardworking Ford "lifer" such as Ford Racing Boss Brian Wolfe have to dance around justifying Ford's cutbacks in motorsports is hardly entertaining.

Wolfe's budget has been slashed by nearly FORTY PERCENT in recent months.

Wolfe, attempting to justify giving over control of the NASCAR Nationwide and Camping World Truck series to Toyota, said:

In NASCAR, it made us focus on Cup and Cup exclusively," Wolfe said. "In the truck series and the Nationwide series, we backed away from a lot of our, if not all of our financial backing, although we're still offering technical assistance to insure the cars perform as well as they can on the track, and a contingency program where we reward some people for that."

* * * *

"It wasn't like it was unforeseen and we had to tear up our plan and start over," Wolfe said. "That's why we were putting our focus in NASCAR on the Cup Series and (why) we're staying in the NHRA, primarily focused on the Funny Cars and the sportsman racers who work with us so well and do so much for us."


"I couldn't be happier with the performance of our teams this year," Wolfe said. "We don't have as many teams (as other manufacturers), but I've learned long ago it's the quality of the teams you have and the qualify of the guys you've got working for you that make a big difference.

Of course, perhaps the greatest year for Ford Racing in the modern era was 1992. Nearly two-thirds of the Winston Cup field were Ford Thunderbirds. And not boring, common-template NASCAR-designed "funny cars," but Thunderbirds that actually looked like production Thunderbirds.

Three Ford teams battled down to the last laps of the season for the Winston Cup Championship, which was won in dramatic fashion by "Underbird" Alan Kulwicki.

During 1992, Jack Roush's Fords were the midst of their incredible decade of dominance in the 24 Hours of Daytona.

Ford also had factory presence in Formula One (Michael Schumacher took his first F1 victory in a Ford Cosworth-powered car), World Rally, Indy Cars (the XB Cosworth won six races in its initial season) and various forms of sports car racing.

Now, while NASCAR and big-time international motorsports "dust and glory" is less frequent these days (excluding WRC, of course), Brian Wolfe's crew are making do in spectacular fashion with vibrant production Mustang-based Grand Am, Miller Cup and NHRA Cobra Jet programs, and a strong (but too small) Ford Racing Performance Parts operation.

Hopefully, Mr. Wolfe will continue to have success in making the case to Ford's bean counters and "appliance motorist" greens in the Glass House that motorsports is essential to Ford's very survival as a manufacturer.

And maybe someday, Ford will see fit to revisit the incredible "Total Performance" era (or at least the 1992 echo of it).

IT’S ON– THE UAW DECIDES TO BURN DOWN WHAT’S LEFT OF DETROIT

For the first time since 1976, the United Auto Workers have called a national strike of a unionized automaker. Unable to agree with General Motors (GM) over job guarantees and off-loading the crushing burden of "Cadillac-style" health benefits into a union-run VEBA trust* while tying future benefits to rational market conditions, the UAW has gone on strike.

[*Update: "UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said that job security was the top unresolved issue, adding that the talks did not stumble over [the Voluntary Employees Beneficiary Association trust proposal]"]

Given the tenuous state of the Detroit 3, a strike is akin to the "nuclear option."

Detroit cannot survive by giving up an estimated $25/hour labor advantage to the non-union Japanese/transplant automakers. Yet UAW intractability has seemingly brought the portion of the industry it manhandles to the brink.

Undoubtedly, the Japanese will "make hay while the sun shines" and seize more marketshare from the domestics during the strike. In the long run, this adversarial relationship will destroy more and more jobs at the Detroit 3. And the UAW will likely remain impotent to spread its myopic vision of labor utopia among the transplants.

All of this makes Detroit less competitive.

Something’s got to give. And that "something"should be the UAW.

Sadly, they’ve decided to torch what’s left of Motown instead.

STOP THE CORONATION! ROUSH-FENWAY MAKES IT A RACE FOR THE CUP.

Given the abysmal roll-out of Ford’s version of NASCAR’s "Car of Tomorrow," and the huge numerical advantage for GM in the Made-for-TV "Chase for the Nextel Cup," savvy NASCAR pundits gave Roush-Fenway Ford drivers Matt Kenseth and Carl Edwards little chance of stopping a boring Chevy runaway.

Yet at Dover, Roush-Fenway FINALLY showed signs of life in the COT era. Carl Edwards won going way. And Matt Kenseth dominated the event, until his Yates-Roush Ford V8 blew up in the waning stages. Meanwhile, all of GM’s usual suspects (including Hendrick drivers Jeff Gordon and Jimmy Johnson, Gibbs drivers (a/k/a future Toyota traitors) Tony Stewart and Denny Hamblin, DEI’s Martin Truex, Jr. and RCR’s Kevin Harvick) all struggled.

It’s only one race of ten, but Carl Edwards is leading the points (as well as in the Busch Series) and may yet become a "fly in the ointment" for GM’s presumed Nextel Cup triumph.

It’s been a tough couple of days for the GM faithful . . . .

BUT GM'S HAVING A BETTER WEEK THAN FOMOCO'S JOHN FORCE

Force was injured in a wild second-round shunt with Kenny Bernstein at Sunday's NHRA O'REILLY NATIONALS in Ennis, TX.

According to Force's website:

"Doctors updated John Force’s family and team following a thorough evaluation of his multiple injuries and the prognosis for a full recovery is very good. Force sustained a broken left ankle and severe abrasion on his right knee. Force’s left wrist also was dislocated and broken and he sustained some severe abrasions and slight fractures on a number of fingers on his right hand."

With the death of Eric Medlen and now this, 2007 has been an abysmal year for John Force Racing.

Speedzzter's thoughts and prayers are with the Force family.

NASCAR HATES FORD (BUT NOT EDSEL)

It is not a happy time for fans of Ford Motor Company’s NASCAR program . . . .

Long-time Ford owner Robert Yates is retiring at the end of 2007 (although the team will soldier on . . . as the flagging Wood Brothers have after the first generation called it quits).

Iron-man Ricky Rudd may never drive again after his shoulder injury in the Southern 500 . . . Oops, Speedzzter means that boring California "cookie cutter" race that now occupies the sacrosanct date for the Southern 500 (RIP).

Ford also completely missed out on the biggest prizes of the 2007 season (Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Joe Gibbs Racing, and Toyota's U.S. marketing and sales genius Jim Press).

As for what’s left of FoMoCo’s NASCAR program, Roush-Fenway managed to land only Matt Kenseth and Carl Edwards into the elite twelve finalists for the 2007 Chase for the (last) Nextel Cup, guaranteeing that only a token one out of every six "chasers" will sport a Blue Oval (which is a far cry from when Ford held half of the Chase slots not so long ago . . . or back in the halcyon days of 1992, when the chase-less Winston Cup came down to a last-race shootout between Ford drivers Bill Elliott, the late Davy Allison, and the late Alan Kulwicki).

Now that Chevrolet has clenched its 31st Manufacturer’s championship (a number bloated by default, thanks to Lee Iacocca, Red Poling, and Henry Ford II killing Ford Racing DEAD in 1970) and the know-it-all scribes have mostly declared the 2007 Chase to be a Bow-Tie only affair among Hendrick-Chevy and Gibbs-Toyo . . . err . . . Chevy jockeys, it’s time to see what scraps NASCAR has left for long-suffering Ford fans.

1. Edsel hired by ISC:

According to the Daytona Beach News Journal and jayski.com, Edsel B. Ford II will become a director of International Speedway Corporation (ISC) in November. ISC, of course, is the holding company for the bulk of the tracks with valuable NEXTEL/SPRINT Cup dates . . . at least the majority of the tracks that are not owned by Bruton Smith’s Speedway Motorsports Incorporated (TRK).

Edsel is well-known to Ford Racing fans as " Team Ford Racing Member No. 1," and perhaps the only member of the Ford family which truly understands and appreciates the importance of motorsport to FoMoCo. Sadly, Edsel did not best cousin Bill Ford, Jr. in the internecine struggle to lead FoMoCo (which would have perhaps stemmed some of the unnecessary declines in Ford Racing over the past ten years and other damaging aspects of Bill Ford’s failed legacy).

The cynical fans will see the France family move to bring in Edsel to ISC as a meager morsel thrown to encourage Ford to "stay the course," even as NASCAR gave Chevrolet a wholly unnecessary (and completely non-"stock") new engine, allowed Toyota and Dodge to crib liberally from Ford’s NASCAR technology (for the benefit of the "show"), and has now drained reasonable hopes of a Ford comeback by forcing everyone into a bland, common-template/Car-of-Tomorrow future.

With ISC and SMI controlling the vast majority of major paved "stock car" tracks in the U.S., it is simply impossible for a modern-day Bill France, Sr., to develop a new, more "stock" stock car league to take on the NASCAR monopoly. But, locking in Ford family support for NASCAR’s brand of low-tech, homogenized silhouette racing is shrewd move (even as NASCAR maneuvers ever closer to becoming a "spec" series without any meaningful tie to any OEM product . . . or reliance upon any manufacturer). Putting Edsel on the ISC board appears to be an interim move gauged to protect the France family monopoly on "stock car" [sic] racing, plain and simple.

2. Edwards on track to win the Busch Series.

Carl Edwards may be discounted by the sports-writer intelligencia as a meaningful threat to the coronation someone from Hendrick Motorsports (Read: GM’s factory racing team) in the Nextel Cup Chase. But Edwards is the points leader and the solid favorite to win the last Busch Series Championship (Busch as a sponsor fizzles off into obscurity at the end of the 2007 season, apparently paving the way for the return of the time-honored (and as of yet unsponsored) "Grand National" moniker to NASCAR’s junior league).

If Edwards manages to hang on, his Busch Series championship may be the only thing Ford Racing fans have to celebrate on "Ford Championship Weekend" in Miami.

Parity in NASCAR apparently means doing whatever it takes to facilitate GM dominance in Cup, tolerating a little token Ford success in Busch, and encouraging the Toyota invasion in the "who-care-anymore" Craftsman Truck Series.

LOSE ON SUNDAY, LOSE ON MONDAY

Automotive News is reporting on September 5, 2007, that August sales for Ford Motor Company (F) are off a whopping 14.4% (12.5% for the first eight months of 2007). "[T]he Mustang, which traditionally has its best sales in spring and summer, dropped 35 percent in August. The F-series truck declined 9.9 percent."

In comparison, GM was up 6.1% for August (but down 7.1% for the year). Toyota was down a trifling 2.8% for the month (but still up 4.9% for the year). Chrysler was 5.6% for the month (down 2.7% for the year). Mazda was up 11.0% for the month on relatively insignificant volume in compared to the other Asian makes (and is up 7.6% for the year).

FoMoCo’s excuses, of course, are legion. Fewer low margin fleet sales . . . Reductions in new housing starts (quelling subcontractor demand for F-Series trucks) . . . The credit crunch from problems in the "subprime" mortgage market . . . high fuel costs (even though demand for Ford’s Expedition climbed 17% in August and Land Rover’s tiny, yet fuel thirsty volume shot up 32%) . . . . GM’s aggressive incentives on its newer-than-Ford C/K pickups. . . The American Family Association Boycott . . . .

Speedzzter will throw a few more theories into the mix.

1. Obvious to everyone is FoMoCo’s long neglect of the entry-level/youth market. According to the Automotive News, Toyota’s drop resulted not from economic issues, but from lack of supply. "Sales of the Yaris small car plunged 31 percent, fueled by an unexpected demand for the three-door hatchback and a shortage of all models." Yet Ford was not positioned to take up the slack.

FoMoCo’s U.S.A. market Focus has not electrified the entry-level market and FoMoCo’s continuing erosion of market share to the Asians is undoubtedly helped along by Ford’s declining capacity to attract younger generations of customers. The de facto ceding of the entry-level market to the Asians is perhaps Detroit’s biggest failure of the past forty years (even bigger than the unsustainable contracts awarded to the United Auto Workers).

2. Ford’s failure to keep the Mustang fresh and "on the edge." While the current Mustang is iconic and Ford has delivered occasional "specials" of note (i.e. the dealer markup rape-fest known as the Shelby GT500 and the woefully underpowered/overpriced Shelby GT), FoMoCo has been "pumping against a slow leak" on the mass-market Mules.

Part of the problem is that the Mustang’s styling is now familiar and FoMoCo has done little to differentiate the new ‘Stangs from the 2005 and later used ones. Style changes have always been a premium in the sport coupe market. And some money is undoubtedly on the sidelines in anticipation of the Camaro and the Challenger.

But Ford has failed to develop a Mustang variant which can attract youth market interest AND run the parents/insurance agent gauntlet.

Ford has failed to produce a high-efficiency "green" variant of the Mustang (i.e. no trendy hybrid).

Ford for years has failed to offer anything of interest to young "import-style" tuners who love small-cube, forced induction engines and eschew "old school" V8s.

Ford has also abandoned many of the grassroots "5.0 generation," who still want the option of ordering a hot, easy-to-modify V8 and heavy-duty driveline on a lightweight, stripped-down coupe at a blue-collar price.

And Ford has not done enough to satisfy the influential "power-adder V8 pony car" niche. While the Ford Racing Performance Parts "packs" are a start, any Mustanger who wants to play at the 500+ horsepower level with a new car must be prepared to spend $65,000+ on a GT500 or spend thousands for a "boost friendly" shortblock (such as FRPP’s Aluminator).

3. Ford’s continuing failure to lead the light truck market with turbo-diesels and larger SOHC/DOHC gas power (i.e the BOSS V8) also hurts. FoMoCo’s F150 is now "old hat" in comparison to newer trucks from most competitors. Down on power and lacking factory sport variants (e.g. Lightning), the smaller Ford trucks simply do not generate much excitement anymore.

4. If there’s even a shred of truth to the old saw "win on Sunday, sell on Monday, FoMoCo’s retreat from motorsports undoubtedly has dampened sales. As late as the 1990s, Ford had a dominant presence in the upper echelons of international motorsports including Formula One, Indy cars, Trans Am-style sports cars, and even as much as almost 2/3s of the NASCAR Winston Cup entries.

But now, Ford has slashed the racing program almost to the bone.

FoMoCo’s dismal NASCAR season (only four measly wins in the Nextel Cup Series, compared to EIGHTEEN so far from Chevrolet) starkly illustrates how far the Blue Oval has fallen. Ford is in danger of finishing THIRD behind Chevrolet and Dodge in the NASCAR Nextel Cup Manufacturer’s Championship. When compared to Ford’s successes in the 1990s, it should be obvious that Ford does not have enough teams competing in NASCAR at the present. Moreover, with FoMoCo apparently not even being in the running for the two biggest prizes in NASCAR in 2007 (Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Joe Gibbs Racing), Ford is giving its long-suffering supporters in the grandstands little if anything to celebrate this year.

Ford’s racing problems are bigger than NASCAR.

Although Ford is winning the World Rally Championship, few in North America are remotely aware of it. (And nothing Ford has on the street in the U.S.A. is analogous to the WRC Focus RS).

More obvious is Ford’s abandonment of open wheel racing. Mazda, which took over as the sponsor of former Ford affiliate Cosworth’s engines in the Champ Car World Series, is climbing in sales as Ford sinks. Ford has been AWOL from Indianapolis 500 (which is still the most important open wheel event in America) for a decade.

Ford’s conquests in Formula One and in world class events such as the Rolex 24 at Daytona, the 12 hours of Sebring and the 24 Hours of LeMans are all but forgotten.

The grassroots isn’t much healthier. Ford captured none of the top ten positions in Hot Rod Magazine’s Pump Gas Drags in 2007. Ford continues its minuscule presence on the thousands of dirt oval tracks in the U.S. Ford’s sportsman drag racing penetration continues to lag. Few Fords of any stripe will compete at the SCCA National Runoffs (even though GM’s top racing brass will almost certainly be well represented in several classes).

The few U.S. successes for FoMoCo in competition tend to occur outside the spotlights and away from the cameras. Ford’s Grand American Mustangs almost never get any air time. Ford’s drag racing efforts are almost all sportsmen competing in the IHRA or in the insulated "Ford only" events. Ford’s off-road trucks are also seldom seen on televison or in print.

As if to illustrate Ford’s declining competition results, old reliable John Force – who remains drag racing’s most compelling personality-- failed to qualify for the Mac Tools U.S. Nationals, almost certainly dooming his chance at another NHRA Funny Car championship.

It’s clear that FoMoCo’s sales declines are the result of a complex web of factors. But let no one doubt that Ford is losing sales in part because it is failing to "Win on Sunday" and then give the fans something relevant, affordable and interesting to "Buy on Monday."