FORD IS MUFFING THE INTRODUCTION OF THE 2010 MUSTANG

With the Detroit 3 teetering on the edge of the bankruptcy abyss, the draconian axe of 35 m.p.g. Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards rapidly descending, and the untimely return of Dodge’s Challenger and Chevrolet’s Camaro, model year 2010 is shaping up to be the apogee of the Second Musclecar Era.

Ford Motor Company – which has had the “pony car” niche all to itself for half a decade – is now faced with the unenviable task of defending its share of the market it created almost forty-five years ago.

Ford’s venerable old warhorse, Mustang, is about the only FoMoCo product which generates any kind of transcendent passion. Indeed some would say that without Mustang, Ford would be irrelevant. The 2010 Mustang is the horse Ford hopes its faithful will ride into what may be the last muscle car battle for a long time.

Further increasing the pressure on Ford is the fact that in the U.S., Ford has neglected all other sporting niches.

-- Ford has no entry-level sport compact to fight Chevrolet’s ultra-hot Cobalt SS and Dodge’s SRT-4. In fact, the recent blizzard of test numbers for the turbocharged Cobalt SS suggest that many, if not most current Mustang owners ought to steer clear of GM’s FWD beast in competitive driving situations.

--Ford has no RWD or AWD sport sedans, while both GM and Chrysler do.

--Ford has no traditional two-seat sports cars.

Thus, what little is left of Ford’s entire “Total Performance” image rests on the swaying back of Mustang.

If early indications prove true, Ford is sneaking into this last battle of the traditional V8 supercar on a lame horse.

Chevrolet has been selling vaporware for a couple of years now. GM’s Holden division has conspired with General Motors Performance Division to cook up an apparently brilliant interpretation of the 1969 Camaro for the RWD V8-capable pony car’s probable last hurrah.

And GM’s public relations department has been planting stories across enthusiast media to build interest in the new/old Camaro. What we know now is that Chevrolet’s V6 Camaro will put more ponies to the ground that Ford’s CURRENT SOHC V8 Mustang. And Chevrolet’s V8 Camaro will smoke Ford’s SOHC by over 100 horsepower. Both the V6 and V8 Camaros are slated to spank Ford’s fuel economy, despite lugging around significantly more road hugging weight.

Dodge spent 2008 selling SRT-8 Challengers in the masssive horsepower and performance chasms between Ford’s nearly-unobtainable Shelby GT500 Mustangs and the pedestrian 300 h.p. Mustang GT. Now Dodge selling the full line of Challengers. While the R/T 5.7 Hemi Challenger handily outweighs and outsizes Ford’s Pony, the prosaic 3V SOHC GT gives up a whopping 80+ horsepower.

Thus, virtually all of the excitement in the press is directed toward Challenger and Camaro.

Ford is left with a five-year old, flabby Pony (in non-GT500 trim) and an overly secretive promise of a refreshened Mustang for 2010.

The only real news about the 2010 restyle is that it’s supposed to look smaller than it really is.

Yawn . . . .

Ford’s apparent strategy is to let GM and Chrysler steal all of the early 2010 headlines and to make a big splash at the Los Angeles Auto Show on November 18-21, 2008.

So far, this strategy has been a flop.

For example, Ford hired some bunch known as “ePrize, L.L.C.” to create a “Mustang Stories” Contest. The grand and only prize for the eprize “Mustang Stories” Contest is a 2010 Mustang GT, a trip to see the unveil at the L.A. Auto Show, and $16,714 for taxes.

ePrize’s contest, however, ought to be a case study in HOW NOT TO RUN A CONTEST.

The lawyers created a set of contest rules which suggested that the essence of the contest was to create and upload a photograph of a “Mustang Moment” and to write a 250-word essay “describing that moment.” The judging was to occur over two days on the basis of 50% creativity and 50% fit-to-theme. Then twenty-five finalists would be submitted to popular vote on the internet for about a five day period.

In practice, the website for the entries was poorly designed and failed to load all of the entries in the preliminaries. The website also allowed entrants to pick from among a series of professional photos supplied by Ford. Obviously, few if any of the entrants could compete on a photographic or creative level with legendary Boulevard Photographic and other professional PR photo outfits. A number of the entrants didn’t even try to create their own photos. ePrize didn’t do much to advertise or promote the contest among Ford’s loyalists and current Mustang owners.

The twenty-five finalists appear to be selected at random or without any coherent criteria. Many of the entries rely on Ford-supplied photos. Several of the contestant-uploaded photos are simply terrible in terms of lighting, composition and creativity. Any serious photographer who took the contest rules at their word and tried to compose a creative photo and relevant essay would be undoubtedly disappointed in the judging.

It wasn’t much of an essay contest, either. Some of the essays do not seem to relate very much to the photographs. A few of the essays discuss dangerous and/or illegal antics, notwithstanding a contest rule apparently to the contrary. Conventions of grammar and punctuation were seemingly not deemed important by the contest judges. Overall, the stories submitted for public vote are mostly uncreative and tedious.

One is hard pressed not to conclude that the whole contest was such a flop that those in charge are merely trying to get this mess behind them in the cheapest way possible.

What’s more, the insipid ePrize promotion does not seem to address the real questions in the mind of the motoring public.

Will the 2010 Mustang be something more than just a quick and cheap restyle?

Will Mustang still be down on power to Camaro and Challenger?

Will a derivative of the legendary 2003-2004 SVT Cobra engine return to take on the larger GM and Chrysler V8s before fuel economy standards shut down the whole party for a long time?

Will the 2010 Mustang feature improved fuel economy (or will it embarrassingly suck down more gasoline than the new V6 and V8 Camaros)?

Will Ford improve performance across the board? Or will the only Mustangers who need not fear an ambush from a FWD Cobalt SS or Japanese sport compact still be the home tuners and those who were willing to pay obscene money for a rarely -seen GT500 variant.

Will Ford “make hay while the sun shines,” or will FoMoCo waste the rapidly closing high performance window on weak 300-315 h.p. “cap gun” pony cars?

Most assuredly, Ford’s struggle for survival limits what resources it has to fight the last Pony Car War or to do something spectacular to cap off the end of the Second Supercar Era. But Ford’s tepid 2010 Mustang introduction seems gauged to deflect attention from an inadequate entry into the battle. The result of Ford’s silence and inaction will be conquest sales by GM, Chrysler and, perhaps, even others.

Letting the Mustang languish an also ran is a sad end to about the only legacy at FoMoCo still remaining.