[Vansquish]

Good response nthfinity, you had me right except for the fact that my dad just retired from working for Ford for 30 years, and that my mom is a contractor, so she moves from company to company depending on where the work is. Lately she's been doing engine management for DCX vehicles, but prior to that she was doing GM.

I hope Ford is on the recovery path, but when I talk to my dad (he is still on the inside as far as information is concerned, he has lots of buddies that he talks to regularly), about it he generally has pretty dour news. All the same, I agree with the idea of the Halo car in principle, but I think a sort of balanced approach is necessary in order to attract the greatest number of buyers, it would go something like this:

1. Make at least 1 GT for every major Ford showroom in the US and do not allow the dealers to sell it until it has been there for some predetermined amount of time.

2. By having it on display every buyer that comes into the showroom and every kid who drives by and sees it in the window will stop and drool.

3. a) After they realize the coolness of the car they'll turn around and see the rest of the showroom which is filled with high-end models of the rest of the Ford product range.
b) Those high-end models have to be balanced as well...an SRT-4/WRX competitor from the Focus platform (perhaps an American version of the RS), a hi-po 500 to compete with the Magnum and 300C (the 500 definetely needs a restyling in order to do this), the iconic pony car in high output trim of course, a replacement Thunderbird perhaps?

Anyway, I don't take much stock in the theory of trickle-down economics, even as it applies to car sales...so my hope is that Ford won't depend solely on the GT to boost sales (it doesn't appear to be doing that so I'm happy at the moment hehe), even though I'm sure it will have an impact.