The March 15th edition of Automotive News said that Phil Marten, Fords cheif of north america product development, owns a "custom-tuned" RX-8.

Anyone know whats done to his car? He was on the design team for the car. I wonder if he has special engine/intake/exhaust/ecu work done from the factory that may be part of a future RX-8 (i.e. US spec Mazdaspeed edition).

 

at least he has good taste. Nothing in the ford line has peaked my interest since the 2nd gen Probe Gt. Of course the GT40 is amazing- but unnafordable to any regular person.

 

They should have never stopped making the probe. I like mine better than any sport compact that is produced today.

 

Probe? Oh Jesus. This is why RX8 drivers get stereotyped as flaming homoerotic fairies.
No other cars have sparked your interest since the Probe? How about the 2003 Cobra, Contour SVT, ZX2 S/R, or Focus SVT?

 

Ford owes Mazda. He probably got that car for free. Maybe, he'll like the mods so much, we'll see them in future RX8s....or 7s!!!

 

If you are rich like Phil Martin there is no reason to drive a ford. No matter how fast they are in a straight line the styling, interior, ergonomics, etc are absolutely horrible. I had entertained the idea of picking up a mach 1 mustang in a couple of years since they will drop hard once the new body style comes out. After sitting in one at a car show I know I couldn't live with how shamefully bad the interior is. I haven't seen a C6 in person yet but I could not belive how atrocious the interior was on the C5. Flimsy plastic door handles of lower quility than an dodge neon on a $50,000+ sports car? ugh.

 

Ford does not "own" 100% of Mazda. They own 36% of Mazda which in my mind does not make them "owned" by Ford. Seems Mazda is still doing it's own thing with the Miata and now with the RX-8, and the upcoming RX-7....

 

Is that an oxymoron?? :D
j/k I really wish that mazda would put out the 7 or even a 9. Heck, I don't care what number... just maybe a 2-seater!

 

33.4% is what Ford claims on their site. Ford also lists Madza, Lincoln, Mercery, Jaguar, Land Rover, Volvo, and Aston Martin as "one of our brands."

http://www.ford.com/en/default.htm

Fortunately, Ford's X and A plans apply to all the above companies! :D

 

I'm hearing that the RX-7 will be ready by 2006-2007. It's possible, seeing how the RX-8 revitalized the interest in Rotary engines.

 

Phil Martens is the Group VP for Product Creation for Ford. He was snagged away from a long career at Mazda back in 2002, thus it is no great surprise that he is driving an RX8.

Ford has had a big problem with introducing new vehicles, especially when you look at the amount of money that it spends on R&D compared to the other automobile manufacturers. Ford has been introducing only about 4 new models per year even though its competitors have been introducing well over a dozen per year.

It's up to Phil Martens to "speed-up" the process at Ford. Hopefully Phil loves the MazdaSpeed version of the RX8 that was introduced last December in Japan, and he will expedite this car into North America sometime soon!

 

One of the things he did with the new Mustang:


Hell yeah!

Edit:
Also unless they REALLY screw it up Ford is going to have HUGE sales numbers on the new mustang. Bet on it.

 

And I am sure that is a wonderful mind. But...the rules of business out here dictate controlling intrest of a company does not need to be 100%, 51% or even 50% ownership. I most cases only a plurality is needed. In this case Ford is the single largest stock holder so they have a plurality and therefore controlling interest in Mazda. Funny... one of the reasons Mazda got in this situation with Ford is the same reason we are all here today. The rotorary engine. Mazda believed so much in it that it almost killed the company and it became a nice little target for Ford acquisition. (I know this is not news to most of you old school rotor heads and I know it has been discussed before somewhere on this board).

 

Interesting. I didn't know about that. That clears up why Ford's sites lists Mazda as on of it's companies.

 

Have you seen the interior of the GT?

 

I don't know where you got that from, but you're wrong. Mazda got hammered when the Japanese economy collapsed, just like Nissan. At the time Mazda had tried to split it's brand image (into 8 or 9 seperate brands) and that excercise collapsed and failed horribly, costing the company massively.

In comparason, warranty claim losses on the FD RX-7 were of no consequence. The FD program eventually turned a profit before Ford showed up anyway.

It's all a shame really. At the time, Mazda was one of the most innovative companies on the planet.

 

Oh and Phil Martens has always been a rotary nut. He had a spirit R RX-7 while he was in Japan. I seem to remeber his wife having an RS spec FD as well.

 

This was WAY before the FD was released. The gas shortage of the 70's coupled with the less than stellar MPG performace of the rotary during that time drove the value of Mazda down. That is when Ford moved in at 25% (And bought more as time went on) And the price of crude oil had a lot to do with Japan's economic downturn during this time.

 

I have seen the interior of the G.T. I worked for the Ford division of Lear Corp. for a couple years and I was exposed to this vehicle, and I worked on the new mustang among other new Ford products coming out. The interior of the new G.T. is very "race car" directed. When I sat in the car I didn't even think it was a Ford product, I thought it was some kind of European race car or something. ????? The interior of the new mustang is pretty sweet. The guages and instrument panel are all chrome trimmed and it has the "retro" feel to it.

 

I have to say I do not agree you Krusty or the guy who posted that bit on the MX-6 board. The poor sales of the RX-7 did not and could not have possibly cause the huge lost of sales of Mazda in the last decade. In general, all of the big Car Manufacturers' major strength in terms of sales and market share relies on their low model, high volumn cars, also known as the common cars. Doesn't matter how good your top model sports car or luxury sedan are, almost EVERYTHING depends on their sales of those Camrys, Corolla, Civic and Proteges. Common cars are where a huge portion of their revenue is coming from. The Top of the Line Sport Cars are more for Marketing (image building) and Promotion (drawing customers to the showroom) purposes.

Mazda failed before because they totally missed the boat with 323 and 626 and got cleanup by the Civic, Corrolla and the Accord and Camrys. Without a strong sale in those line, Mazda lost a huge market shares in the most profitable segement. It is because they were short of cash that results in their cars had poor quality materials (attempt to cost cutting) and that's why the last RX-7 in NA was put together with a shoe-string budget and wasn't really reliable. You see, the last RX-7 was more a result of their miserable sales and NOT the cause of the problem.

The good thing is, Mazda finally learned their lessons. As you can in the Mazda6 and Mazda3, they put lots of effort into making the cars look exciting as well as packing lots of features. These are the models which determines the future success of Mazda NOT the RX-8. Believe me, in terms of Marketing yea the 8 is the big brother, but inside Mazda, I bet you 100 to 1 that the Mazda3 team got a lot more say and resources than anyone else in the company. After all they are responsible for pulling in more than 60% of the revenue.

 

Nissan was in even worse shape than Mazda in the mid 90's and the 300zx outsold all other competitors cars, even the Vette I believe. That just proves that companies don't survive off of their niche cars.

 

Phil Martens was Mazda's product development chief. He is a major reason the 8 exists.

 

Exactly. Anyone who has the excellent book on the 8 by Jack Yamaguchi should understand just how much of an influence Phil Martens had on the 8. He talks about having done 35 to 40 chassis development projects previous to working on the 8, and said that the resulting 8 platform was the best one he had seen.

His comments on the 8 and his participation in that program are quite interesting... anyone who is an 8 enthusiast who does not have this book should get it!

 

NOTE:
During late 1969, Mazda Project engineer Akio Uchiyama started working on a two seat sports car project X020A the so called RS-X. Unfortunately the 1973 oil crisis killed off this project but Akio found himself along with many other mazda employees of all ranks helping to clear the backlog of unsold cars at Mazda dealers in 1975.

Please review your Mazda history. The RX-7 was not even CLOSE to being the first rotary car from mazda. Cosmo anyone??? I am NOT blaming the RX-7 I am blaming the rotary concept during the gas crisis of the 70's.


Rotary Line-up

Wrong time frame. I am talking about the 70's NOT the 80's or the 90's Ford bought their stake in the late 70's after Mazda's decline in sales due to the fact they rested the hopes and dreams of the company on the rotary format.