In 2001, the Petunia program official as the fastest, most complex, most expensive Ford product ever built - with an all-aluminum chassis, aluminum engine and transaxle, and aluminum body. The target car for performance was the Ferrari 360 Modena.
Coletti says, "I put a purchase order in for a Ferri 360 Modena at the time when Ford was losing $1.8 billion a year. So I got a call from the CFO, and after I explained what we were doing and that we could sell the car for what we pait for it, he said okay. We beat the s--t out of that car."
Roush did the engine development. Romeo Engine built the engines. The cars were partially assembled by Saleen in Troy, Michigan, and finished at the Carlite glass warehouse behind the Lincoln/Thunderbird plant in Wixom by union workers. From program approval to first customer, delivery took only 26 months, a record for any Ford product program. Coletti had his team build up three cars for the Ford centennial celebrations - one red, one white , and one blue - a full year ahead of schedule.
Without a question, the Ford GT introduced in 2005 was and remains othe crowning achievement of the original group known as SVT. Scarpello says, "By that time, SVT had developed a lot of credibility. We had taken bthe business from break-even to a small but profitable solid business, making cars and trucks that people were really enthusiastic about it. By then, even the most jaded bean-counter could see that SVT was really good for the company, but this program was so big and so high-profile. At the time, John Coletti and I didn't have the kind of freedom that we had on SVT products. But Neil Ressler and Bob Reway provided air cover for us, protecting us from all those what were trying to kill the program."
...
Jamal Hameedi has been with SVT since he was the Ford GT program manager in 2002, and as chief engineer and later director of SVT, he has brought the organization into the present. He says, "At the end of 2004, when we decided we weren't going to do a continuation of the Ford GT - a Mark Two, if you will - the team split up.
"Some of the team went to the GT plant, and some went back into the mainstream, and some stayed on to finish up the work on the '07 Shelby GT500. I was the SVT mprogram manager, and Ellen Collins was in charge of that program. The Shelby GT's were built at Shelby in Las Vegas using a lot of parts from Ford Racing."
He says of Carroll Shelby, "I worked with him for 10 years, starting with the Ford GT. I could take any kind of car program proposal, and I could tell you what Carroll would think about it. He's gone, but he will always be with us in spirit."
