Prodrive plans Ford performance division

Former Ford factory Supercars racing team Prodrive Racing Australia (PRA) has confirmed plans to create a passenger vehicle performance division.

The news was reported by The Daily Telegraph newspaper in Sydney last week, which referred to PRA plans to offer a higher-performance version of the Mustang road car.

But motoring.com.au understands PRA’s ambitions extend to a wider range of Ford vehicles and involves both performance and appearance upgrades.

“Mustang is an obvious one, but a lot of other people are doing work in that area so we are not pigeon-holing ourselves to that area at all,” PRA chief executive Tim Edwards told motoring.com.au.

“It’s something that we are looking at but we are still evolving our plans as to exactly what that might look like,” Edwards added.

“We know there is a reasonable appetite out there in the market place for it, but we have to be careful where we play in that field because there are a lot of people in that space.

“We want to do something that is a little bit unique and so we are just formulating those plans at the moment.”

Those plans are far enough along for PRA to have hired former Walkinshaw Performance Products boss Tony Harris earlier this year.

There are already a number of offers in the market for Ford performance fans, including Herrod Motorsport, Mustang Motorsport Australia and Harrop Engineering, all of which have waiting lists for their Mustang supercharger kits.

After dipping its toe in the water earlier this year with Mountune power-up kits for the Fiesta ST and Focus ST, Ford Australia is also planning to offer Mustang performance parts with a factory warranty.

PRA employs around 50 staff and has dedicated manufacturing, machining and design capabilities, meaning it could develop parts and equipment as well as assemble packages from outside suppliers.

“You’re right, we do have capability to do a lot more than bolt on other people’s stuff,” Edwards said. “Performance can be defined in many ways.”

The move into road cars also has historical precedent for PRA, which was originally known as Ford Performance Racing (FPR) and was the racing arm of Ford Performance Vehicles (FPV).

Ford Australia took sole control of FPV from joint-venture partner Prodrive in 2012 and closed it in 2014. FPR was purchased from Prodrive by a consortium of local motor racing identities in 2013 and renamed for the 2015 season, the last year that Ford provided sponsorship.

Despite the lack of Ford backing, PRA continues to race the Ford Falcon FG X in the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship and will do so again at least in 2017.

PRA’s Blue Oval history put it in a logical position to get into performance road cars, Edwards said.

“The race team was originally set up to complement the race car business. It’s almost like being in a fish bowl. There is a void in the marketplace that everyone knows about and we have been entertaining the idea of how we revisit all that.

“It (working on Fords) is the natural thing for us to do given what we do on-track, but that’s not to say it couldn’t work with other marques at a given point in time.”

Edwards backed away from any definitive commitments on deadlines for the project.

“We keep setting them and moving them. Until we are 100 per cent sure on what we are exactly going to do it’s hard to say,” he said.

“I am not denying we are looking at it, but many aspects of it are still a work in progress.”

Edwards absolutely rejected one aspect of the newspaper’s story, which predicted the Mustang would become PRA’s Supercar racer in 2017.

“No chance. We are 18 months into racing the FG X and it has proved a competitive package.

“There is no pressure for us to move away from the FG X at the moment. We need to maximise our time using this car.

“At a point in time we are going to have to look at other platforms because we will look a bit redundant when we are racing something that hasn’t been in the market for a number of years.”