Ford Announces its New Global Performance Team

Ford Performance (Credit: © Ford)

For the past few years, Ford has been steadily working on building more and more performance vehicles to satisfy the global demand for go-fast cars. However, despite all being under the same Ford umbrella, the automaker’s three main performance arms — Ford SVT, Team RS and Ford Racing — have all remained separate from one another, which slows their ability to share information with one another. Well, that is no longer the case as Ford has announced that it will unify the three and create one global performance team known simply as Ford Performance.

This team, which was once rumored to be named 999 already has huge plans in the works, including releasing 12 new performance vehicles by 2020. Within these 12 vehicles are two highly anticipated models: the next-generation F-150 Raptor and the next-generation Focus RS. The latter of those two is by far the biggest news, as in the same press release Ford announced that the near-300-horspower hatchback will be made available globally, including the U.S. You read that right, the once Euro-only Focus RS is confirmed for U.S. delivery, but there is no specific timetable for its debut.

This new team is headed up by Dave Pericak, and will have multiple engineering centers around the globe. In the U.S.. the team’s base will be a new technical center located in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Other details surrounding this team are still unknown, including what vehicles — besides the Focus RS and F-150 Raptor — are slated for tuning by this newly formed arm. If I were a betting man, I would say to be on the lookout for a few more performance-oriented Mustangs, a successor to the Ford GT and a performance sedan based on the Taurus or Fusion to all be high on the team’s list of priorities.

We’ll keep our finger on the pulse of this new Ford Performance group and let you in on all the latest news as it becomes available.