R Spec
Ford’s Mustang wasn’t born here but the Herrod Performance Mustang R-Spec is made here – in the old Ford plant in Campbell eld, where once they built Falcons
Ford’s Mustang wasn’t born here but the Herrod Performance Mustang R-Spec is made here – in fact, the run of 500 of these Ford-approved Herrod-enhanced supercharged ‘stangs were made in the old Ford plant in Campbellfield, where once they built Falcons. Bruce Newton spoke to Herrod about the monumental effort involved in what is effectively the downunder equivalent of Ford’s collaboration with Shelby in the US.
There’s no doubt we’re into a new Australian automotive era now. At Walkinshaw Park in Clayton, HSV is converting Chevrolet Camaros and Silverados from left to right-hand drive. Up in the northern suburbs of Melbourne at Premcar, they’re producing a higher performance version of the Navara pick-up for Nissan.
Back in the day, HSV specialised in hotting up locally-built Holden Commodores, while Premcar – then known as Ford Performance Vehicles – did the same thing to Falcons.“
But perhaps the most poignant, interesting story right now might be what’s going at the old Ford plant in Campbell eld, where Falcons and Territorys were built until October 2016.
A part of the assembly line has come alive again to build the Mustang R-Spec, a supercharged version of the iconic pony car.
It’s the rst supercharged V8 Mustang ever to be sold with a full warranty through the Australian Ford dealer network. It’s not cheap at $99,980 plus on-road costs, but the planned production run of 500 examples has already sold out.
“I love what I do,” smiles Rob Herrod.
Bald as a badger, solid as a brick outhouse, 60-years young, enthusiastic, excitable Herrod is a blue oval performance tuning icon in Australia. And he is a key reason the R-Spec exists.
Just like the HSV’s right-hand drive Camaro and Premcar’s uprated Navara, the R-Spec is a local solution to global indifference.
General Motors hemmed and hawed and ultimately said no to a RHD Camaro. So HSV parent, the Walkinshaw Group, took on the job of delivering a fully compliant local solution. Nissan Australia wanted a higher-spec truck than the factory could deliver, so Premcar engineered, developed and now assembles the N-Trek Warrior.
And the R-Spec?
Well, as grateful as an all performance-loving
bluebloods are that Ford builds the Mustang GT V8 in right-hand drive – braver than GM, note the payback being spectacular sales success – they also know there are other Mustangs we don’t get here.
Specifically, the Mustang Shelby GT350 and GT500, two iconic models in the line-up originally developed by the famed Ford tuner Carroll Shelby in the 1960s.
Nowadays developed by the blue oval’s global high-performance and motorsport arm Ford Performance, they have been denied Australia primarily because of the difficulty of right-hand drive conversion.
Or, if you want to be succinct, bundle it all up into that over-arching term ‘business case.’
That has left the field in Australian open to aftermarket tuners to offer supercharged righthand drive Mustangs to a steady stream of customers, eager to boost power and torque in the naturally aspirated V8 GTs, at the expense of their factory warranties
Often, the parts they were using were coming straight out of the Ford Performance catalogue.
Among them, of course, was Herrod and his company Herrod Performance, which lays claim to being the biggest Ford Performance agent outside the USA. In other words, when Rob comes knocking, the lads in the USA open the door.
All this was being keenly observed by Ford Australia. Having had sell-out success with the limited edition Bullitt in 2018, it was acutely aware an ongoing and substantial stream of revenue
was going elsewhere. If the Yanks couldn’t make the business case add up, what about doing the job locally?
Ford had its own plans for a while, but then around the start of 2019 came the unification with Herrod, who was already working on a kit for the latest MY18-20 Mustang with its uprated ‘Gen 3’ Coyote engine.
Herrod invested some money at the start of the project, but once Ford Australia committed it became the big spender.
“At first I thought it was just going to be retrofitting superchargers to existing road cars and that is what we were working towards,” recalls Herrod. “Then sort of out of nowhere they decided they wanted to do a complete car.”
That meant everything in the R-Spec would not only be certified to meet Australian Design Rules, but would have to be compliant with Ford internal standards so it could be warrantied and sold by Ford dealers.
And it would all have to happen inside one year to hit the schedule!
So no surprise there are many fingers in this high-performance pie. Ford Australia and Herrod, obviously, but also Ford Performance in the USA and here.Yep, Ford’s Melbournebased global product development centre (which also encapsulates the You Yangs test centre) is the home base for the Ford Ranger Raptor, an officially designated Ford Performance model. So those guys got roped in.
The local Ford Performance lead on the project was Justin Cappicchiano, a name that might be familiar to fans of FPV-based Falcons and the final XR8 and XR6 Turbo Sprints.
“To offer a car like this through a Ford dealership requires a hell of a lot of co-ordination, consolidation and consultation in relation to what needs to change,” he explained. “From a compliance perspective there is work that needs to be done, from an engineering perspective there is work that needs to be done and from the national sales company there’s work that needs to be done.”
Cappicchiano and his team were focussed on the homologation and ADR compliance of the car and how it would be built.
“It might sound a little bit bland but it’s the stuff you have to do and say like ‘this is the calibration that’s in it, this is how it was tested and this is how it has been industrialised.You can show the chain of custody from programming to on the road,” he explained.
Hands-on development was Herrod’s job, but Cappichiano’s team kept a watching brief to make sure this was a civil car as well as a potent one.
“We needed to make sure they are going to be capable and able to be driven by normal customers,” explained Cappichiano. “We needed to put on our normal customer hat and drive it that way, take it into traffic, assessing how it behaved; it’s not a pig, it’s not hunting at idle, does the air-con upset it.
“All those things need to be right or it’s not going into a Ford dealership.”
There were some small calibration changes to aid drive-by noise and fuel economy. They were made by Ford Performance supplier
Roush Performance in the USA with Herrod’s input based on calibration tables supplied by Cappichiano’s team.
“It was a fun job, we got asked for the keys a lot,” laughed Cappichiano. “It was nice to get back in the (V8) game.”
The design team at the PD (product development that is) also got involved. Dave Dewitt, the designer of the Ranger made the detail changes to the Mustang’s looks that tuned it into an R-Spec. That name, along with the side stripes, pays tribute to an old FPV model.
There were others involved. Premcar helped sort out the assembly line, drawing on experience from their FPV days. Across 10 stations and 15 hoists, six R-Specs a day are being built by 60 people. They’re all drawn from the factory’s old workforce. “They’re the cream of the cream of the crop,” he enthused.
The decision to re up Campbell eld again to build the R-Spec came about through necessity rather than romance.
Herrod Performance simply didn’t have the capacity at its Thomastown shop to build 500 cars. But Ford had spare factory space going.
And Ryan Story was also involved – yes that Ryan Story from the DJR Team Penske Supercars team. He helped Herrod sort through the contractual paperwork with Ford.
Story and Herrod are old mates. Don’t forget the recently announced Dick Johnson Limited Edition by Herrod Performance Mustang, the 635kW supercharged coupe that they dreamed up together.
But boil it down and the R-Spec was Herrod’s car to develop, build and deliver. It’s called second tier vehicle manufacturing and for homologation purposes the car is formally known as the Herrod Performance Mustang R-Spec.
Herrod’s been told the only other person Ford did this kind of joint-venture with was Carroll Shelby: “It doesn’t change me as a person. but it’s nice to know,” he says.
“It’s been a big job,” he adds. “I have built 250-300 supercharged Mustangs where the car comes in my door and we build the car. But to build the R-Spec, I had to make sure I could get the parts supply. Think about it, no-one has every bought 500 superchargers through Ford Performance. No-one has ever bought 500 suspension kits through Ford Performance.
“I don’t think anyone could truly understand what I have been through,” he continues. “It’s not just getting a Mustang and all the parts and bolting them in. It’s working with the Ford customer service department; what oils do you run in the car, what fuels do you run in the car? It just goes on and on and on.
“We had to do a service book, we had to do training videos. Every aspect of this car, me and my team had to be involved in. Ford could not do it on their own.”
At one stage the whole process looked like it was going to be derailed by new federal
government stink bug rules when containers of parts were already on the ocean. By sheer force of will Herrod avoided a 16 week delay and a $30,000 bill.
“I’m like a little bulldog in my own way,” he laughs.
The R-Specs’ tech reads straight forward by performance tuner standards. Take a six-speed Mustang GT Fastback and add a Roush stage three 2.65-litre roots-type positive displacement supercharger with a maximum 12PSI of boost to the 5.0-litre quad cam 32-valve V8 engine.
The kit includes an aluminium high-efficiency intercooler and full-face radiator, fed by a larger front air intake speci c to R-Spec.
The standard Mustang GT punches out a handy 339kW and 556Nm, in the USA Roush claims the supercharged Coyote makes as much 710kW and 610lb-ft by the time you slot fourth gear. Here though, for essentially political reasons there’s no official claim, but Herrod reckons there’s more than 500kW and 800Nm at the crank.
A speci c cat-back exhaust provides a unique soundtrack for the R-Spec and can still be adjusted through Mustang’s active exhaust function.
Firmer Ford Performance springs lower the R-Spec by 20mm compared to the regular Mustang GT and are teamed with MagneRide suspension as standard.
The MagneRide system has a unique software calibration for the vehicle dynamics module (VDM), which adjusts the damping rate 100 times a second, and is intelligent enough to know the R-Spec sits lower.
The handling package also includes Ford Performance adjustable stabiliser bars that measure 37mm (+5mm) front and 25.2mm (+3mm) rear. But you do have to get under the car to manually change their settings. They come set up quite soft.
Six-pot Brembo front brakes and Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tyres come straight from the GT. The black 19-inch Ford Performance alloy wheels are 9.5-inchers at the front, and 10-inchers at the rear. This is an increase of 0.5mm for both.
You might think the wheel and 275-wide rear tyre package is a little underdone. But that’s the maximum that could be lifted from Mustang options without going through the costs and time of a re-homologation.
There are no changes inside the cabin, except for a build plate on the dashboard above the glovebox (and the optional diff cooler switch on our test car). Nestle in to the driver’s seat and you could be in any standard V8 Mustang.
But re up the engine and its immediately apparent the game has moved on seismically. There’s supercharger whine, then valvetrain chatter and exhaust growl as the revs rise and rise and rise.
But if you’re expecting something explosive, violent or volcanic look elsewhere. This engine does what supercharged V8s so often do; it just keeps going. It’s almost sneaky about it. Only when checking the speedo do you realise you’re travelling at some ridiculous speed
And it’s not only the linearity of performance, it’s the quietness of the cabin. This car lives up to its GT origins in the way it shields its occupants even when the exhaust ramps up. It crackles and bangs appealingly on the over-run, but you’re never contemplating ear plugs.
The chassis behaviour offers similar all-round appeal. Thanks to its adjustable driving modes, the suspension and steering can be altered from almost benign (normal) to pretty crazy (Race). Those excellent Michelin tyres are a huge help on the road or race track. You really can pile into a corner hard and then get on the revs early and enthusiastically without losing the front or sliding the rear … but if you want to slide the rear, well no problems there either.
You can even dial the whole thing back and cruise, although we’d stop short of saying it’s a
truly comfortable everyday drive.
Then there’s the other extreme, drag strip performance. In the USA, testers are achieving 11.5 sec 400m times, but in Australia motoring media efforts are settling at 12.5. And rather than threatening at four sec 0-100km/h times, the R-Spec is running high fours.
A tired test car, a poor surface at Heathcote drag strip where the tests have mostly been conducted, lack of operator skill… these are all reasons that have been suggested. To that we can add a failing shifter fork in the Getrag MT82 gearbox that inhibited the crucial 2-3 change in our 400m runs.
It was also noticeable the R-Spec retarded slightly after a couple of hard runs, dropping a little power and speed. Herrod explained that was the conservative oil temperature protections required by a full Ford ve-year warranty kicking in.
Herrod is aware of the chat that’s been generated by the local inability to hit the expected performance times. And it pains him because it’s diluted the focus on the rest of a great package.
“Those 11.5s are achieved on a perfect track and the car is perfectly prepped,” he says.
“The R-Spec is a proper production car with all the bells and all the whistles and it does all right.”
In fact it does better than that. It really is incredibly capable and amazingly complete in the driving experience it offers.
It’s also a brilliant example of how the Australian automotive industry is renewing in a new form.
It’s much smaller, much nimbler and very much niche. It’s populated by people who are ambitious, committed and courageous.
Importantly, it’s delivering cars like the R-Spec we can still love.