I agree with you that Ford is more australian with engineering and manufacturing with their products but the thing is in reality the only Australian part about Ford & Holden is the Falcon and Commodore. Yes the Commodores were originally cut and shut euro opel models but (and I haven’t found any evidence to contradict this) the VE commodore is on an Aussie developed platform, designed with help from the Americans.

If you wanna get down to the nitty gritty, Ford is more australian than Holden, and the Falcon is the only Australian car, it’s designed here, built here, everything, unlike the Commodore, which for a large majority of its life, was a rip off of the Opel Omega

As for not being affected……….you obviously havent heard of Pontiac. lol

Anyway Ford had to cut back funding somewhere so had to cut funding for some teams. They were never not going to back FPR considering Prodrive own a fair slice of FPR. Now I believe Ford were going to support 888 until the incident last year where Lowndes was meant to drive the FG show car but then vodafone cut in and said lowndes wouldnt be driving it because he was contracted to wear a vodafone race suit. A little dispute came about so James Courtney drove the car. 2 weeks later Ford annouces they are withdrawing support for Team Vodafone. Obviously something has happened in the background where Vodafone and Ford couldn’t see eye to eye. I can definately say that Ford didn’t withdrawl support because the cars were the wrong colour. All they needed was a splash of blue like last year.

Ok back to the topic. I don’t think you’ll see 888 winning races right away. Yes the cars are similar but they still have different handling characteristics. 888 will be going to all tracks with virtually “no data”. Granted its a similar situation this year going from BF to FG but the aero package is the virtually the same. Whereas the VE has a vastly different aero balance because it is much wider. 888 will be up the front but dont expect the domination you see atm for at least 12 months. They will win races though they are too good not too.

Oh 888 will still be building customer cars, holden & Ford. Thats their major cash flow right now so they won’t stop building customer cars. Not the 1st time that has happened either, in 1995 Larry Perkins built Tony Longhurst an EF Falcon while Larry continued building his commodores.

Anyways V*SC licenses should be allocated 50% Ford, 50% Olden. Really it is V8SC who should also be enticing new entrants into the sport.

Anyways Ford will have some younger drivers who will hopefully step up (Courtney, Cheeseburger, W/Bottom) who will hopfully have there teams step up and produce some wins.

Holdens philosohpy when it comes to the public – Screw the morons we’ll tell them that we’re Australian, even though we’re not, the idiots will believe it

Holdens philosophy when it comes to racing – If you can’t beat them, first have a cry about they way the operate, then if that doesn’t work…. buy them.

Holdens philosophy when it comes to new cars – We’ll give it the same name as a car which failed to sell two years ago(Cruze), maybe the public has forgotten.

Holden philosophy to GM going bust – Well tell the public that it won’t affect us at all, even though we can no longer export the Bomb-a-dore, and we can no longer import the Astra… (umm, hello, how could that NOT affect your company???)

Not real bright on the ‘red’ side of the fence are they?