Fours forlorn and fast Falcon focus for now

Ford Performance Vehicles (FPV) will build "fast Falcons" only -- for the foreseeable future. That's the outcome of Ford Australia's decision to drop local production plans for the Focus and the topsy turvy nature of the Australian dollar.

FPV boss Rod Barrett confirmed yesterday that the Ford hot haus would focus on Falcons exclusively, in the wake of the Focus axing.

"We're building fast Falcons. We've noted our specialty," the FPV MD said.

"If the mothership doesn't produce the mother car, we have got very little opportunity to make a locally-produced [performance] Focus now. That was always our waiting game.

"We don't do imports -- they are price-prohibitive for our business case and when the decision was made that the Focus wouldn't be made at Broadmeadows that effectively ended the FPV Focus," he lamented.

Barrett also confirms FPV would not revisit Territory, stating: "We didn't have plans to go into an F6X at the new [updated] Territory."

Of the now discontinued F6X, the FPV boss said: "We had a great car. The F6X was a very good car but unfortunately it didn't appeal to the market…"

According to Barrett, FPV had not reached the point of building its business plan around the Focus, or indeed any non-Falcon product.

"We hadn't really opened discussions with Ford on the [local] Focus. It was really a decision that was coming -- once the decision had been made whether Focus was in or out [of local production]. It hadn't come in [to our firm planning] so the business plan didn't change at all -- it was still down the Falcon line."

While Barrett would not comment, Carsales Network believes that in preparation for the new Focus, FPV was, however, well down the track to securing around 200 units of the stove-hot Focus RS for the Australian market.

Built by Ford Europe's FPV equivalent, Team RS, the three-door Focus RS features a 224kW version of the same five-cylinder engine fitted to the Focus XR5, as well as significant chassis upgrades

Discussion took place with TeamRS boss Jost Capito and agreement was gained for the RS to wear FPV badging. A local price of "under $60,000" was the target.

Last year's collapse of the Aussie dollar killed the project, however. Though the currency has recovered to a level to again facilitate the importation of the cars, "The window of opportunity has closed," our source stated.

Barrett is nonetheless upbeat about FPV's future as a Falcon-only operation. He says the company will sell around 1975 units this year -- three per cent down on 2008's total of 2035 cars and within cooee of FPV's record 2007 mark of 2144 cars.

"FPV is about 200 units down on the same time last year but we don't think that's too bad, given the shape the industry is in," Barrett told the Carsales Network.

"We're heading for a pretty good year under the circumstances. We're tracking to be about 60 units down over 2008 -- about 3 per cent.

"When you consider the industry's tracking a lot worse than that and also the large sedan segment is travelling a lot worse than that, we're quite happy to be targeting a figure of just under 2000 units again in 2009," he opined.

"I'd have loved to do 2500 cars this year and then 3000 and 3500, but it's just not the economy we're working in.

"I think it's been a better year than I envisaged. If you had said to me at the end of March-April that we would do close to 2000 cars this year I would have jumped for joy," the FPV boss stated.

Read the latest Carsales Network news and reviews on your mobile, iPhone or PDA at www.carsales.mobi