Ford to produce global performance car

By Alborz Fallah | March 02nd, 2010

If you want to reinvent your brand, or attract new buyers, having a halo car is critical. Nissan know this as they’ve spent considerable amounts of effort to maintain the GT-R as of one of the world’s most desirable cars, now Ford Motor Co. has announced that it will produce a global performance car based on the re-engineered, restyled Focus.

Of course it won’t be a GT-R killer but the new Ford performance car will go head to head with the traditional Japanese affordable sportscars such as the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution, Subaru Impreza WRX and Mazda3 MPS.

“You will be seeing an increasingly global approach to both performance and motorsports from Ford in the future,” said Derrick Kuzak, Ford’s group vice president of product development.

The shift to focus on a global level performance car is different from the previous idea of developing performance models regionally, however FPV fans have nothing to worry about here.

More details about the Focus based performance car will be revealed in the coming months. This may in fact be related to our previous article: Ford Focus RS replacement could feature hybrid power

Mitch

Doesnt this just mean that they will release the Focus RS everywhere?
Joker

No,

RS was a limited Run and based on the LV platform.
It won’t have the 5 pot engine either.
Expect an EcoBoost Twin Turbo 4 Cylinder, DuraShift Gearboxes (DSG) and AWD (potentially) on this one.
nemo

I can see how a WRX can be seen as a halo car, riding on the coattails of ’90s success, but the 3 MPS ?

tekkyy

lol yeah author was a bit careless there in including Mazda3 MPS,
a different market and price point to Lancer Evo

Rongway

Maybe I’m old, but if I was Ford doing a global performance car, I’d be looking at making the Mustang the machine every kid wants again, not a Focus.
This weekend I saw a dozen old ones on the road and even my non-car-loving kids noticed some of them.
I have no idea if there were any Ford Focus on the roads – they just aren’t iconic, don’t stand out, don’t have the attention grabbing ability of a Mustang.
To have any real street cred, it must win races or rallies in what can be sold as almost production form. Heard of a Focus winning anything lately?

This isn’t a global performance car, this is a way to make go-fast stripes cost less to put on and still be able to charge a premium to put them on.

jp

ummm heard of the WRC? you know that world rally series that only ford and citroen have been able to field cars in….. granted focus didn’t win, but did take the tight fight to seb loeb.

I do agree you have a point, but i can gurantee you a halo car out of the uk will be a better product than us and prob even aus. Plus you do have to remember the trend of new car purchasers towards smaller cars!

All this aside i dont see them ruling out a large global performance car, they are simply announcing this one, prob have figured out what platform a large car will be built upon, which makes sense if you look at th fact that falcon platform hasn’t been confirmed and the possibility that that platform will be shared with the mustang and hopefully aus developed

toxic_horse

But everyone knows the WRC cars have nothing to do with the road going versions and don’t really associate the road cars them.
rongway’s point was making a road going car with race proven cred like subaru and nissan have done. (like ford did in the old days with the sierra cosworth and the rs escorts )

jp

granted the sierra and escorts were exactly that….. but your also going back to the days of when the falcons, gtr and toranas were driven straight to bathurst with a roll cage and raced. Simply doesn’t happen anymore, there isn’t a well known series available for anything that even resemble a road going vehicle, and definately isnt a global series. The only exception is possibly targa tas? which is what the mazda’s are trying to develop some cred in racing the 3 mps.

In saying that it would be great if we had a global series with different classes of vehicles pitted against each other….. with cars having minimal changes to standard running gear. doubt will ever happen

Shak

They already have a brand spanking awesome ‘Global performance Car’, its just that they havent made it global!

noj

The Taurus?

Valet Dabess

all i can think of is a awd focus
Andrew Juma

Ford, put an automatic/sequential manual in your hot Focus and watch it sell. Volkswagen realized this and we can all see how well the GTI and R32 are doing.

Shak

They dont just sell in droves because of their gearboxes. Look the Polo GTI that has a DSG and it aint doin so well. You need many more things to make a great Hot hatch. Ford have proven they can do it in the RS Hyper Hatch, but they have also proven they dont know how to get cars onto a boat and to us!!

gmac

GTI for me!

QwkEddie

GTI…too slow for me!

toxic_horse

Love that colour !!
matt_b

i like the idea, maybe with a seriously hot focus they’re looking at the future prospect of tighter emissions standards that might make the ‘stang struggle?
Millatime

2011 blown Falcon GT-HO is the global Ford performance car! The septics in Detroit just need to wake up and smell the tyre smoke!
ABMPSV

Forget about Global Perfomance car when you loosing on basic sale figures. For the first time in living memory, former market leader Ford slipped out of the top three, with a market share of 8.7 per cent Lates numbers for Feb 2010 new car sales is

Top 10 makes, February 2010:
Rank Make Sales % Share
1 Toyota 16,814 20.5%
2 Holden 11,213 13.6%
3 Hyundai 7208 8.8%
4 Ford 7148 8.7%
5 Mazda 7003 8.5%
6 Mitsubishi5026 6.1%
7 Nissan 4596 5.6%
8 Subaru 3278 4.0%
9 Honda 3102 3.8%
10 VW 2998 3.6%