Ford Shelby GT500 Forum banner
Status
Not open for further replies.

Shelby gt500 Body Style Change in 2014.

9K views 34 replies 16 participants last post by  Tejas500 
#1 ·
Heard a rumor today at a car show from a SVT design member , that changes in body style are coming in 2014 not 2015 like we all we're thinking. Looks like the 2013 Shelby maybe the last before it moves to the next new design stage.
Has anyone else been hearing anything like this?
 
#2 ·
I dont think that will be the case. From my understanding ford has two years of the current GT500 line up. Dealers have to pay the $2000.00 SVT fee to qualify for a GT500 and that is supposed to be split for two years of cars.

I think we will see the 2014's in EARLY 2013 and they will be a medium to long run till we start seeing the new body released at auto shows.. Then all 2014 they will phase out the old s197's and bring in the new body!!
 
#7 ·
I hope there is a 14. I have decided not to trade my 12 on a 13 but to wait and buy a 14 since, in my opinion, the last year big HP car would be the better one to own thinking of depreciation/appreciation 10 years from now.
 
#8 ·
I too had considered doing the same thing for the same reasons - plus to not miss-out on any feature content Ford may add. Who knows? There MAY be a backup camera and heated/powered Recaro Seats after all.

The only mitigating factor for me was not knowing what Ford may or may not do - especially after it cut short production in 2012. A million things can happen, like gas going to $6 gallon, etc that might influence Ford into acting unpredictably. About the only certainty beyond a new 2015 car is that any 2014 changes will be minor.

The potential flip-side is there being a run on product and NOBODY's willing to deal, driving prices through the roof and availability through the floor. Since, to me, there's really no point in spending so much without ordering EXACTLY the car I want, I really couldn't get excited about my chances of finding a leftover I'd like.

Nevertheless, I've already made deals to secure first allocations for 2014s - just in case. Especially 10 years down the road, I'll be glad to have traded forward if anything meaningful is different.
 
#9 ·
You guys have it covered... People often confuse calendar years with model-years. The SVT guy was speaking in calendar years...

The "new" 2015 Mustang will surely be out in the spring of 2014 (which is still almost two years off folks!..), and Ford may well run a marketing-campaign that labels them as 2014.5's.
 
#10 ·
And don't think Ford will pass-up the opportunity to produce just a handful designated as "2014.5" with all sorts of 50th Anniversary option packs and regalia to go with it - before dropping the 50th stuff and rolling straight into 2015.

Hopefully the 2014.5s will at least include one exclusive color or stripe treatment that's NOT "Gotta Have it Green"...
 
#11 ·
My use of the word "marketing" is because the VIN and the Title must be one year or the other... So any "14 1/2" talk is purely semantics by Ford, a way to differentiate the cars indeed, just as it turned out to be in 1964. The "64 1/2" usage was primarily born in dealership shops and parts departments in order to identify the cars properly when performing service and repair, as there were many running-changes made as they transitioned August into mainstream '65 production. A mechanic ordering up certain parts from the parts department would have to specify "it's a 64 1/2" to make certain they got the right parts, i.e. 64 1/2's had generators, but '65's had alternators, and myriad other small differences throughout.
 
#12 ·
Even if Ford markets a car as a 2014.5, the title will still call it a 2015. Ford can't arbitrarily choose the model year. If the production line starts on a model in one year, it must be labeled as the following year. It's a legal thing.

It's why the Camaro is currently on the 2012 MY while the Mustang is a 2013. The Camaro line started the current model production in December of 2011, the Mustang line started in February of 2012.
 
#13 ·
It's why the Camaro is currently on the 2012 MY while the Mustang is a 2013. The Camaro line started the current model production in December of 2011, the Mustang line started in February of 2012.
Camaro's a 2012 because that's where its cadence fell, and it's the year's regulations with which it complies. It can only be produced through the 2012 calendar year. Whatever GM plans to produce into 2013 will need be compliant with next year's regulations - even if neither the car nor the regs change.

That's why most model years straddle the prior year. But, Mustang's summer-centric RWD nature have tended to keep its runs entirely within a single calendar year - as do many cars in its class.

Although it hasn't affected Mustang nearly as much per se, most makers have gone crazy pulling forward product to stimulate the demand since the 2009 downturn, playing all sorts of hell with normal cadences.

2014 is likely to be a very short year with the 2014.5's being introduced early as part of the 2015 campaign but set apart by marketing folks in the same way Ford considers BOSS 302 to be a GT.
 
#14 ·
If history repeats, 2014 will be a basic carry-over of 2013, with a few ticky-tack color changes or graphic packages, along with DEEP factory-rebates and incentives, to help spice-up sales and get all of the old iron off the lots prior to the new platform's release.
 
#15 ·
That's pretty unlikely. The days of Ford allowing metal to broadly accumulate on dealer lots has long since passed.

Besides, 2015 is going to be a VERY different car - made and marketed to suit global tastes, regulations, and practicalities. There's likely to be enough concurrent demand for both body styles without necessarily having to resort to profit sapping incentives.
 
#16 ·
Even if there is "demand" for the outgoing model, it's historically been a tough sell getting full prices for last-year models. Remember back when the SN-95 was being introduced? There was a HUGE contingency of Mustang fans who thought they were hideous, bulbous, overweight and under-performing. They were walking into dealerships and buying the last '93 Foxes up...

However, reality is that those types of fans/enthusiasts who actually give a damn about such things is actually a small fraction of overall Mustang buyers, even during transition. We underestimate how many "not really car people" buy Mustangs for varying reasons.

As-such, Ford was giving $$ back toward the end of '93 to help move those Foxes off the lots.

We'll see, but I still think there will be incentives.
 
#18 ·
There WILL be incentives, but they'll be FAR smaller, with a far fewer number of vehicles to clear.

'94 was back in the days when makers were pushing every bit of metal they could produce upon dealers because there was little difference in labor cost between producing 1 vehicle and 50,000 - and then pay customers to buy them.

It was a primary reason for Detroit's ultimate implosion and abandoning the practice and staying on the right side of the demand curve has been a primary reason for not only Ford surviving the downturn intact, but becoming so profitable since. It's also why allocation for all Ford types is so scarce.

With the broader sector's net margins being in the 6-15% range (GM a the low end and Ford at the upper), the effect upon earnings every $1,000 difference in per-unit profit is dramatic.
 
#19 ·
We shall see... Ford's been pumping this basic platform for 8+ years, going on 9... Most of the engineering/development/tooling is fully amortized and off the books. The car is nothing but materials, a bit of labor, a bit of marketing, and profit now.

Rebates are far more harmful to the automaker when they're forced to toss them out early in a product's lifecycle. Not so harmful late...
 
#20 ·
"nothing but materials, a bit of labor, a bit of marketing..."

Setting aside how much each of THOSE cost... only the chassis has been (mostly) amortized. Almost every other aspect of the car has been subject to continued development and new technologies and Ford's labor costs at Flat Rock are among North America's highest.

Incentives are damaging regardless of when they're applied - it's only a matter of breadth and depth, which can carry over throughout the entire brand. Because incentive cash is money that comes directly back off the books, the net effect of being able to eliminate merely a mere $250 across the board equates to nearly a half-billion dollars in bottom line net profit.

Yes, incentives DO serve appropriate tactical purposes, and that's where Ford is intent upon keeping them - beginning with paving the way for the final year of S197 by keeping 2013 production so lean which has the additional benefit of supporting transaction prices across the board, albeit more for the benefit of dealers.

But there are dealers that have already sold through their 2013 Mustang allocations and are obtaining new product only through dealer trades. Even brokers are having a hard time locating large quantities to sell. Availability may ease somewhat at balance out in a couple months, but there won't likely be many and those will likely be already-made units for stock comprised of whatever components they have the most of.
 
#21 · (Edited)
You're over-reacting a bit, I was speaking simplistically/loosely in order to avoid boring and annoyingly long posts regarding a not-terribly-hot topic.

The chassis and overall "platform" truly is the biggest piece of the puzzle, along with driveline. The expense of continuing to develop or making changes pales in comparison to the original blank-sheet job. I stand by my comment because (without going into painful detail) it's true (there's more meat at the bottom-line towards the end of platform run).

The fact that Ford is doing a better job in managing production and inventories is a slightly different subject, although I agree that it improves their position moving towards 2014.

This is silly because we're not so much disagreeing, we're just off on how deep Ford might go on the eventual incentives.

Let's do everyone a favor, and just revisit a year from now! ;)
 
#22 ·
Managing its production and inventory is the single-most important factor to the issue at hand. How much cost Ford has or hasn't fully amortized won't matter a whit when using incentives to pair demand and inventory.
 
#23 ·
I try to get out, but you keep sucking me back in!! ;) :D

You're looking at it a bit too 1-dimensionally. Regardless of how little excess inventory is languishing toward the end, Ford still wants to sell as many units as they can possible produce and get away with. Sometimes you can make less profit per-unit, but by virtue of incentivized pricing, you spur enough additional sales that you actually EXCEED the bottom-line profit that you would have realized otherwise.

Ford will likely use incentives to optimize, as they always do. They have to sell enough Mustangs to keep at least one shift busy and the factory rolling.

They could do nothing and manage inventory perfectly.. But they could also do "something" (incentives), and sell 20% more vehicles at 10% less net-margin, and come-out net-ahead.

I'm sure they've got this down to a science, and WE SHALL SEE!!
 
#24 · (Edited)
Now I'm sucked back in.............


I'm sure there will be rebates, but will they be on the plentiful overstock Mustang GT's and V6's? or will they be on the far lower production number SVT Mustang? My guess is that the far less production 650 horse SVT Mustangs will be very few by the end of the current bodystyle, while the other "plentiful" GT's and V6's will get the deep cut prices to move them, as the new body gets closer.


I have not kept up with SVT dealer inventories when the bodystyles changed, 1998 to 1999 or 2004 to 2005, but I do not remember any of the dealerships being heavy on SVT Mustangs to the point of giving deep price cuts to move the "older body" Mustangs, in fact I do specifically remember reading fine print at the lower portion of the "end of model year sales event" advertisement stating "discount pricing excludes SVT models" on these older Mustangs.

Maybe it was different in the 2009 to 2010 change? IDW?

^^^^^I do know that many SVT dealers kept their ADM+ in place, which did not help to sell the older body and by the time they realized that the car was 1-3+ years old and still in their inventory, it was time to think about removing the ADM, and by then, it was a much older (new) car so they had to drop the price to sell it.<<This could happen........I don't think the price drop at 2-3 years old was so much a Ford incentive as much as it was a dealership waiting for a ADM+ sucker, and then waiting too long.









R
 
#25 ·
I never meant to imply that there'd be rebates/incentives on GT500's. That most-certainly won't be the case, as there will likely be a considerable wait for the next-gen Shelby (of whatever the next halo Mustang is called) to arrive.
 
#28 ·
I just ran a locate on Shelby's that have yet to be titled.

2010- 6
2011- 52
2012- 148

I thought it was interesting, one of the 2011's had "dealer adds" and when I looked to see what they were, they included a radar jammer and a few other trash mods. I'm sure a consumer wants to buy a car that is equiped with a jammer and a few thousand miles...kinda tells a story.

Anyways, Ford won't give incentives to the showroom stragglers. The dealer is paying floorplan on them, Ford doesn't care.

An inside source at Ford said that Ford is developing another super car (wouldn't elaborate but said it would be a mid-engine 800+ hp car). With that being said, the same source that the government regulations are going to be much harsher in the next 5-10 years. It's been thrown around that every car produced will have to meet an average mpg of around 30 and trucks are going to have an average of 20 mpg. If that's the case, all of our cars will go up in value in the next 10 years.
 
#30 ·
I drove the 2015 prototype to Herman Mo for Shelbyfest no one thought is was a big deal. BJ just paid no attention.
 
#31 ·
They put a 2500.00 dealer incentive on the 2012's I own one. Check the pricing on the 12's they are all about 5K under sticker 2.5K from the incentive and 2.5 from the dealer marking it down. I had this discussion on another post in which I was told pretty much the dealer just discounted my car 2500 after I Z planned it.Which means I bought the car for less then the dealer paid for it and they then gave me 2500 more dollars to take it home. "WRONG" I had 2 dealers in 2 states offer me the incentive money to buy one of their cars. They cut production short on the 12's because the 11's were still in the showroom when they came out. The 13's while hot will fizzle out and do the same after all the impulse I gotta have the first ones are sold. While I love the GT500 paying 60K for a mustang is more then most are willing to do. Ford has priced themselves out of MOST of their buyers. The 2003 Cobra coupe was 36,000 sticker and still one of the best resalers Ford has ever built.
 
#32 ·
I just ran a VINCENT on one, and you're right, Ford did offer a retail rebate of $2500. But, they offered more, and I'm surprised the dealer didn't tell you. There's also a $2990.28 A/Z Plan Dealer Commision.

And the rebate you did get comes from Ford, it's not costing the dealership any money to let you A/Z plan a car. Ford sends the dealership a check for the rebate after the deal is done and you give the dealer your PIN.
 
#33 ·
The rebate on 2012's was due to the fact that once the details of 2013 released, it was necessary to incentivize the 2012's to keep them selling..

I doubt you'll see a rebate on 2013 GT500's, because there's nothing "bigger/badder" on the immediate horizon, and there's alot of hand-wringing going on regarding what the next-gen car will be, not to mention it's likely 2-3 years off.
 
#34 ·
The rebate on 2012's was due to the fact that once the details of 2013 released, it was necessary to incentivize the 2012's to keep them selling..

I doubt you'll see a rebate on 2013 GT500's, because there's nothing "bigger/badder" on the immediate horizon, and there's alot of hand-wringing going on regarding what the next-gen car will be, not to mention it's likely 2-3 years off.


I agree. The 2011's did not have rebates, because the 2012's are more or less the same as the 11's. There was not enough change or innovation to really separate the market. The 13's will follow suit with the 11's, and the 14's will follow the 12's. Meaning that the 14's will more than likely have incentives because the 2015's are going to be so much different.
 
#35 ·
I begrudgingly sold my 2012 in November of last year after a few issues couldn't be resolved and Ford fought me too long on a Lemon buy-back. I bought that car with every option except the glass roof for $3000+ off of sticker in late Summer. I looked into buying another 2012 last month and most dealers in the area were offering invoice without even asking and one dealer was offering me $1500 back of invoice and this wasn't on any special plan. These dealers simply want to get rid of the "old" inventory and make way for the 2013's that will likely sell like hot cakes through the Fall at sticker and even above.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
You have insufficient privileges to reply here.
Top