This past week, we just obtained documents concerning the development of the 2002 Mustang - but what to do with them becomes another issue in itself. Should they be posted, sold off for profit or shelved ?

How does the release of spy photos and upcoming product information effect Ford Motor Company? At first one would think that it doesn't make too much of a difference - but it really does, and that's what this article is going to try and explain.

Let us use the SN-95 (1994) Mustang as an example. The Mustang is clearly the market leader in its segment. It's grouped with the Prelude, Camaro, Sebring and TransAm among others.

Since the Mustang is the segment leader the competition will always be gauging it, hoping to get an early view of upcoming model changes so they too can incorporate them into their design as well.

The SN-95's development started approximately in April of 1989. The car didn't come out into 1994.....5 years of development. But that wasn't the first time such a long development time was incurred - the Taurus took 6 years!

During these long stages of product development, Ford must take steps to make sure that from the design stage until the time of market - their products undergo the utmost of secrecy. The whole reason behind all of this secrecy? To maintain a competitive advantage.

You already know that it takes a long time to design a car and get it to market. What you may not know is that when Ford marketing and design collaborate on a project they anticipate the market will embrace and purchase their product, in this case the 1994 Mustang.

What Ford tries to do is take their market share leading Mustang and incorporate new ideas, themes, packages and cut costs saving the company millions while selling a lot of Mustangs making the company millions.

But the competition is eager to find out what changes Ford will make to their Mustang in advance so they can adjust their "Camaro" accordingly. Consider that the Mustang would be all new in 1994, but the Camaro was still years away from a redesign, - what benefits could GM gain for knowing in advance some of Ford's upcoming features?

GM could offer price conscious shoppers incentives, make optional features standard, offer rebates and lower interest rates to steal consumers from buying the new Mustang. These decisions would take time for GM to consider, going through various channels such as marketing - but if they were to know critical details of the upcoming Mustang's features, GM could adjust their Camaro with relative easy and timing. It could possibly lead to GM selling a Camaro instead of Ford selling a Mustang - GM just acquired a new customer that will pay on that product for 4-5 years. Not only did Ford loose that sale, but Chevrolet was able to "polish up" an older model and sell it at a crucial time when Ford's new model was about to come out - with Ford loosing their competitive advantage.

How do some of the details concerning future Ford products get released? Some come from PVT (Project Vehicle Team) Engineers or staff on that particular development team at Ford who talk without regard to product safety - but more so due to their ego = bragging rights.

Another example is the 1999 Mustang itself. During the development stage an upper manager at Ford publicly stated that the new model would have IRS (Independent rear suspension); however, Ford itself had not yet approved a final decision. Think of what would happen had Ford not approved the project. Ford would have lied right? That's not all. Consider a consumer waiting for that product when he/she could have bought a Mustang a year ago - money Ford could have had a year earlier.

While Ford has a poor track record of concealing their future vehicle development, they are getting better. . . but not fast enough.

GM pulled off a great coup when they introduced the SS 454 Chevy truck - had Ford known about it earlier they could have introduced the F150 Lightning and taken some sales away from Chevrolet. That's what competitive advantage is all about.

Back to those 2002 Mustang documents - what would happen should competitors find out what changes Ford might make to the 2002 model TODAY? They would either loose their competitive advantage to cross-town rival GM or be forced to make product changes costing millions of dollars that will have to be accounted for elsewhere in the program - or both! This could lead to price increases, product changes due to budget constraints and even loss of market share -it's that crucial.

But consumers and enthusiasts alike are always eager to find out what their favorite automotive manufacturer is up to. What products will they see next year that they might want to wait for instead of buying a current model - but let's face it - buying a car is all risk anyway.  

1998 COPYRIGHT

WWW.BlueOvalNews.COM

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED