MORE EVIDENCE THAT FORD IS KILLING PERFORMANCE (AGAIN)

[Get the latest "Truth With Speedzzter" here]

Call this one a rumor. But if it's true, it's bad.

“The new Focus RS is pretty special, and not just because of its incredible performance, but because it’s likely to be the last car of this type you will see from Ford.”

He explained the economic downturn meant there was “absolutely no business case” for any new RS models at the moment and that this situation would probably never change.

This sad development, if true, reminds "Truth With Speedzzter" of FoMoCo's disasterous overreaction and myopic retrenchment from high performance and racing in 1970:

After nearly a decade of "Total Performance" success (mostly at the professional level), Henry Ford II became concerned by the safety-emissions regulatory storm brewing in Washington D.C. and his responsibility to Ford's shareholders. After some turbulent hearings by a Congressional committee, Henry reacted by slashing the racing program. When Henry fired Bunkie Knudsen (who had left GM after being bypassed for promotion), Ford lost its biggest racing fan. Lee Iacocca was then all too ready to purge "Knudsen" loyalists, many of which shared Knudsen's passion for motorsports and to strictly execute Henry's hasty retreat on factory racing and high performance.

Thus, in November 1970, Ford killed its racing and "Muscle Parts" programs. Ford's largest domestic competitor at the tracks -- Chrysler-- also severely cut back its sponsorships and then killed the Hemi. An era was over.

Ford seems poised to repeat all of the same mistakes again.

Let's all hope another wimpy "Mustang II" or FWD PROBE-Stang isn't on FoMoCo's tree-hugging docket (although that would be better than killing off the storied Pony Car tradition entirely).

Speaking of wimpy and green, FoMoCo is busting a gut to sell "THE ALL-NEW 41-MPG 2010 FORD FUSION HYBRID"

The 2010 Fusion Hybrid is the most fuel-efficient midsize sedan on the planet. And right now, you can take advantage of a $3,400 tax credit when you make the new 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid your own.

Now that'll really make up for a dwindling supply of real high performance vehicles . . . .

Tell'em Barack Obama sent you . . . .

Not that taxpayer subsidzed hybrid motoring in a Mexican Ford will be cheap. It will cost around $1,000 more than in a hybrid Camry ("$27,270 for a hybrid gas-electric version" versus $26,150 for the Tokyo version of Mr. Electric's snoozemobile).

But then Ford would like to sell SOMETHING . . . ANYTHING . . . .

Ford Motor Co's (NYSE:F - News) chief analyst, George Pipas, estimates that U.S. auto industry sales dropped in February to a range of about 9 million units. Retail sales, or vehicles sold at showrooms, likely declined about 40 percent in February.

This is reflecting in poor dealership profits, according to the Automotive News:

U.S. auto dealer profits slid to a nearly two-decade low in 2008 and could fall even more this year. According to the National Automobile Dealers Association, the average dealership made a net pretax profit last year of just 1.0 percent of sales, down from 1.5 percent in 2007.

Apparently even gouging baby boomers on GT500s can't take up the slack . . . .


NOW EVERYBODY . . . .

Gray skies are gonna clear up,
Put on a happy face;
Brush off the clouds and cheer up,
Put on a happy face.
Take off the gloomy mask of tragedy,
It's not your style;
You'll look so good that you'll be glad
Ya' decide to smile

That's apparently what the folks at MazdaSpeed have done. On steroids.THE NEW MAZDASPEED 3. . . a front end "happy face" only a clown could love?

Perhaps it's just "Truth With Speedzzter," but does the juxtiposition of the new front-end blackout panel, eye-shaped headlamps and nameplate on the new Mazdaspeed 3 look like some sort of clown on "meth" (that other, bad kind of "speed")?

Not good.

And the new Mazdaspeed 3 apparently is shipping with the same engine that gets slaughtered by GM's direct-injected turbo EcoTec. So perhaps the clown face is for display in the mirrors of the various tuner cars that outrun the 'Speed 3.

Or maybe it's a grimace.

Where are brilliant "muscle car" designers like the late Larry Shinoda when you need them? At least Shinoda knew how to apply contrasting "blackout" panels to a musclecar without creating a circus wagon effect.

CAFE + CASH FOR CLUNKERS = FOMOCO'S "ONE-TWO PUNCH"

[Get the latest "Truth With Speedzzter here]

No doubt about it, William Clay Ford, Jr., Alan Mulally and the other radical greens at Ford Motor Company threw the automotive enthusiast and racing communities "under the bus" when they caved in to the infamous Obama-Schwarzenegger 42 m.p.g. Corporate Average Fuel Economy deal, and supported the disguised bailout/corporate welfare plan known as "Cash for Clunkers."

The company that's been gouging us for years on the overpriced Shelby GT500s, and which further plans to rip-off more of its most loyal customers with the bogus, V8-less Taurus SHO, is likely planning to use the OBAMA-nator's artificial market limitations to line its corporate pockets and kill off virtually all OEM rear wheel drive performance vehicles.

Under this fetid "deal" "Truth With Speedzzter" predicts that the vaporware "Coyote V8" will have one of the shortest careers for a mass-production engine ever.

Ford will wholly abandoned all pretense of serving the traditional RWD V8 enthusiast as it does backflips to cajole us into tiny, expensive Fiestas and other mini-cars that RWD V8 lovers will absolutely hate.

Whatever the OBAMA-Schwarzenegger-Eco era "Mustang" becomes, it's likely that current V8 ponycar customers will reject it as a worthy successor (even as Ford has done its dead level best to lag behind in the Second Supercar Era horsepower race with undersized V8s constructed with the weakest, cheapest, most worthless possible internal components). Of course, factory-paid journalists and propagandists will extol the virtues of the next generation wimpy, V8-less spiritual successor to the horrible 1974 Mustang II and the awful FWD Mazda-Probe-stang.

When that happens, there will be little if any reason for any Ford V8 traditionalists to darken the doors of a Ford dealership. The only thing that will be left of eighty years of affordable V8 performance tradtion at that point will be fading memories, and the dwendling number of collector Fords that somehow manage to escape the jaws of Billy Ford's "Cash-for-Clunkers" crushers.

Ford's "eco" politicking is simply a one-two punch to the guts and the wallets of its most loyal customers.

About the only other thing that's certain is that everything will cost a lot more.

Car Connection had this analysis:

The only reliable prediction, in fact, is that it will cost more--simply the cost of developing low-consumption new cars and advertising them to an uncertain public.

More involved is the dynamic for used cars. On the one hand, used-car prices are sure to rise as consumers can no longer buy a brand-new Chrysler 300C or Cadillac STS--as those companies get out of the big rear-drive-car business and shift their product mix heavily downward in size and engine output, some will opt instead to buy used and see how the new cars size up later. Since there will be a shortfall of new models as automakers spin on their heels to meet the new rules and to change American tastes roughly overnight, there will be a resulting shortfall in used cars as well. Shutting down production of bigger new cars now means fewer of them for sale later--and at the same time, more of you will want recent-model used cars that are bigger and safer on average, when compared to what you'll be offered in 2016.

Also pushing used-car prices higher: proposed cash-for-clunkers legislation. While some think it's yet another sop to the rich, giving a credit to people who can afford new cars, cash-for-clunkers deals also pull used cars with some value off the market. According to the Detroit News, under a plan still wending through Congress, drivers who turn in a car getting less than 18 mpg and purchasing one with fuel economy better than 22 mpg would get a voucher for $3,500 to $4,500 off a new car. Those incentives might very well take good used cars off the market for families that need low-cost used transportation.

Whatever the end result, the car of the future will look a lot less like today's Chrysler 300 and Ford Crown Victoria and a lot more like the 2011 Chevrolet Volt and the 2011 Ford Fiesta. Of the roughly 300 models sold in the U.S. today, about 130 meet a 30-mpg standard--not the nearly 40-mpg goal that will be required to blend with truck requirements and meet an overall goal of 35.5 miles per gallon

In other words, pay a lot more and get a lot less. Just like back in the 1970s.

FoMoCo and William Clay Ford, Jr. in particular, of course, apparently don't care about any of that. The Panther's dead. RWD is dead. V8s are dead. The Mustang as we know and love it is now on death row. Obama's plugging the wimpy hybrid Escape. And they're most likely giddy about all of that.

And they'd probably be happier if the Obama-Schwarzenegger assault on vehicular liberty destroys the "business case" for SVT, Ford Racing Performance Parts and Ford's support of motorsports. The appliance motorists in the Glass House will raise a toast with the liberal U.A.W. at the death of factory-built "American Muscle." The bean counters and "Steady Eddies" left in FoMoCo's bureaucracy will celebrate the "deproliferation" of high-performance options, just like they did in the 1970s.

As long as the per-widget profit margin is high enough, most of the hacks at Ford Motor Company would be happy building glacially-slow, one-cylinder plug-in hybrids. They simply just don't care about serving the wants, needs, and dreams of potential customers in the high-performance V8 market niche.

They will decry market-based oil imports as dangerous to "national security" even as they hypocritically become more beholden to cheap imported components and materials from Communist China and other places that categorically oppose America's national security.

And when the cookie-cutter, expensive new OBAMAmobile FWDs do not sell in sufficient volume to be profitable, William Clay Ford, Jr. and his paid public relations henchmen will undoubtedly be lobbying the Democrats for a draconian increase in the federal gas tax as a means of "re-educating" Ford customers to what Dearborn thinks is best for them.

The sad thing is that the thouands who would have enjoyed GT500-level RWD performance, had it been packaged in a more affordable form, will never have the opportunity.