Here's what I wanted:

http://members.tccoa.com/traveler/Pics/SVTthunder.jpg

Too bad it never happened. It would have been the current GTO 5 years earlier!

I remember that article! I was doing the Mustang 5.0 thing at the time and that was pretty exciting.

That car died a death caused by the retarded SUV boom... not only did they scrap the SVT T-Bird, the scrapped the whole damn line of cars! All the 4.6L motors ended up in V8 Explorers IIRC. :( :mad:

My buddy's Mark VIII has a 4.6l I think. Is it different? You'd like his car, 6spd, eibach springs, koni struts, Cobra front and rear brakes.

http://img167.imageshack.us/img167/9711/img0107sg9.jpg

JC, that's a sick M8! In fact the M8 and the '94-'96 TBirds shared a lot of parts since they were both build on the mn12 platform. Same V8 motor (4.6L SOHC), and lots of bolt on bits. The Mark VIII brakes were beefier than the TBird's, and were a popular cheap upgrade (think WRX brakes on an RS), but I've never seen Cobra brakes on a Lincoln!

As far as big luxo-sports-barges go, the Mark VIII was second to none really... 'cept maybe a big old 2-door Caddy Eldorado. There were some prototype drawings of a Mark IX that kicked ass back before the new-retro TBird came out... it was hyper-modern. But since they TBird went retro, the Mark IX prototypes sucked.

I guess there's rumors of an '09 Mark IX based on the Mustang... but I haven't seen any images.

I thought you'd like it. Cobra front brakes bolt across so they seem to a be a popular upgrade but the rears he had to fabricate some stuff to mount. It's the only 6spd Mark VIII on the planet as far as he knows.

That would have required Ford to not be the washed-up, self-destructive, non-visionary, beancounter-led, de-contenting, poor-decision-making, labor-hamstrung, uninspired piece of shit company that it is.

The flushing sound is getting louder boys, hope you enjoy your ride down the bowl...

^ now seriously, how do you really feel about ford?

You'd be surprised... he's probably the biggest Ford fan-boy on the board. He's just a non-delusional fan-boy. :lol:

My family's owned several Fords. I drove a 95 Mustang for a long time. The company's always had a lot of potential; they have lots of bright, capable engineers & designers working for them (at least they did, they've been laying off a lot lately though). But practically every great concept that has come through for the last couple of decades has been killed off by beancounters, watered down by inept executives and the company lawyers' "corporate requirement" pronouncements, or otherwise squandered by the management.

The idiots in charge are always completely focused on scrimping pennies in all aspects of the manufacturing process in order to run more efficiently in the short-term and "save money". What they don't seem to realize (or maybe they have by now, I don't know.. it's probably too late even if they have) is that in the long-term the decreased value of their resultant shitty product line has lost them a lot of money overall.

The low-level engineers that actually do the work of designing their cars know all this, btw - there's just nothing they can do about it.

Not true. They can quit. That is what every engineer I know who has worked for them has done.

There's always that I suppose.

btw nice sig Austin. from my favorite film of all time.

ford sux.

That was a great fucking movie.

Don't worry guys, ford is definately back on track!

Yeah, Ford is on the up and up. Especially with the new announcements of the Ford Taurus and the Ford Taurus X.