FPV GT returns to its spiritual home

A Silhouette black FPV GT was unveiled this morning at Ford's new 'hot shop' inside its Broadmeadows plant, as long-time Falcon owner Hayden Stafford stepped forward to collect the keys to the first GT built entirely at Ford's Broadmeadow's plant in 37 years.

The year was 1976 when the last Falcon GT was built in-house at Ford – an XB model – however the modern day Ford Performance Vehicles (FPV) GT is returning to the factory for survival, not for nostalgic reasons.

Question marks still hang over the future of an Australian-built Falcon beyond 2016 although Ford insists the FPV sub-brand will be protected, recently buying up Prodrive's share in the company after the UK company pulled out of the FPV operation in August 2012.

FPV Vehicle production of its ten models will now occur in its main Broadmeadows Assembly Plant 1 and the supercharged Miami V8 will hand-built at the Geelong engine plant, after the previous FPV assembly plant was closed in December last year.

By assembling FPV vehicles in-house, Ford says the process is now more efficient with "double handling" of vehicles eliminated.

Previously vehicles had to be transported between the FPV facility not far from the Ford factory. Now they roll off the manufacturing line straight to Assembly Plant 1, where it takes about a day and half for the FPV transformation to take place. Everything in the new facility is completed by hand, explained Godwin Rapinett, in charge of the new FPV assembly area, from the fitment of new body panels to the integration of high performance brakes.

Two engines are offered in FPV vehicles, a 4.0-litre inline six-cylinder turbo-petrol for F6 models that pumps out 310kW/565Nm, and two versions of Ford's 5.0-litre supercharged V8, worth 315kW/545Nm in GS models and an earth-shaking 335kW/570Nm for GT, GT-E, GT-P and GT-RSPEC models.

Ford Australia President and CEO, Bob Graziano, told motoring.com.au the Blue Oval is pleased to have FPV move into Ford's Broadmeadows plant, quipping: "The legend comes home after 37 years".

The Ford Australia boss explained that the move to the spiritual home of the GT won't lead to the return of the hallowed 'Falcon GT' nameplate however, nor the scrapping of the FPV badge.

Mr Graziano said that the FPV brand will be kept "for the foreseeable future" and that FPV has been "an important part of the Falcon brand".

"It's such an iconic brand for Ford," he said of FPV. "To continue to build on that, it's something we wanted to do as a brand and that's why we brought it back in," said Mr Graziano, signalling his intention to continue to develop the niche high performance brand.

As Ford consolidates its assembly operations and talks about building on the brand, it's unlikely we'll see an expansion of the range to new models, the Ford President all but ruling out a new FPV Territory.

"That's not something we're looking at, at this point," said Mr Graziano of a hard-charging Territory. "It's not something were hearing from our customers. What they're looking for is exactly what we've added into territory in terms of the diesel, the towing capacity, the range, the technology we've put into that vehicle."

Mr Graziano side-stepped questions about the return of the XR8 and a reborn GTHO halo model.

"There's been a lot of questions raised about whether XR8 will come back. We've got nothing to announce on XR8," he said.

Quizzed about the potential for a GTHO, Mr Graziano said: "There's always a desire to do that. I hear from people everyday that they'd love to see the GTHO come back. In terms of what customers would look for in that vehicle, there's no plan at this point to return with a GTHO."