HSV boss hits Ford arch-rival for six

OUTSPOKEN Holden Special Vehicles boss John Crennan has warned Ford is undermining the viability of its hot cars division, Ford Performance Vehicles, with its strong focus on six-cylinder engines.

Speaking at last week’s launch of the HSV Coupe 4, Mr Crennan claimed the XR6 Turbo was damaging FPV’s core business – selling high-powered V8 Falcons – and that FPV’s 2004 sales decline was due solely to the turbo six.

In the latest pot-shot fired between the two rival performance houses, Mr Crennan also said FPV’s plans to sell a hyped-up version of the XR6T called the F6 Typhoon from November would further hurt the company’s image.

"The cake is only so big. And I could be wrong, but I think it (F6) will put a lot of pressure … on their GT and GT-P when you look at their sales and see that this year they’ve fallen back dramatically," he said.

"Our major competitor – if I can be so generous as to rate them that way – last year started out well but the graphs have dropped dramatically this year. So whether they just filled a void for a while, I don’t know."Mr Crennan produced his startling view of Ford and FPV’s sports market strategy while being quizzed about the chances of re-entering the hot six market now that Holden has launched the new Alloytec V6.

That car will be sold in both 175kW and 190kW forms and there is capability for turbocharging.

Nevertheless, Mr Crennan shied away from any suggestion HSV would re-enter a market it was last in with the ill-fated XU-6.

"It (XU-6) didn’t do much. And I really find the Ford business case interesting," he said.

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John Crennan was emphatic in his assertion HSV would not develop another six-cylinder model in the short-term

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"They’re doing obviously a fabulous job with their turbo (XR6). Last year they launched FPV in March, they really only got cars on stream I suppose around about May and between May and December with GT and GT-P and Pursuit, they got up to 190 cars a month. They were also doing a spectacular job on the six-cylinder turbo and I thought ‘Isn’t it interesting – there may be room for all’.

"Since then they’ve sustained their volume on turbo six, but V8 has dropped to hell.

"In other words, can your brand do everything – can it have an outstanding six-cylinder product that’s maximising its potential, then at the same time can you do exactly the same with your V8 offerings?"And the way I’m leaning with the Ford business case, which we’re looking at very closely, is that it was good while the GT thing was fresh and new, but it’s dropped and you’re throwing a lot of action at the market – incentives, etcetera – to get that back up.

"So if we had the choice of being able to say we want to continue to be able to do 4000 to 4500 V8s (per annum) and compromise that by putting in something that was pretty slick in the six, then no."Mr Crennan was emphatic in his assertion HSV would not develop another six-cylinder model in the short-term.

"I put my hand on my heart when I say we do not have anything in our business plan today that says we’ll take the high-feature V6 and do something with it," he said.

Instead, Mr Crennan believes HSV has untapped opportunities in the aftermarket area, using the Alloytec V6 as one possible avenue.

"Since the emergence of our business we’ve seen an enormous growth in other people, one-man-bands, doing an HSV sort of thing in an unsophisticated aftermarket manner and there’s been big growth in that," he said.

"And I suppose we’ve said to ourselves, ‘Do we just continue to allow that to happen or do we get in there?’ We certainly don’t want to remove the purist nature of the HSV brand but as a company we are certainly looking at some aftermarket or tuning programs and I’m not dismissing the potential to look at the high-feature V6 on a tuning basis.

"But if you asked me if we’ve ticked a single box in that business plan process, no we haven’t.” "But that is seriously on the radar, and I feel more comfortable looking at it from that standpoint than going head to head with our established V8 business."