[Martinjlm]

Originally Posted by whiteboyblues2001

Ford was well aware how good the Alpha platform was, it was in the ATS and CTS with high praise of the chassis, then came the ATS-V, which was pretty much a Camaro with a TTV6 instead of an N/A V8. In fact, they are almost the same in HP and TQ.

I remember watching a MT video with the ATS-V, and realizing that the performance part of the review would be just about exactly the same as the upcoming Camaro.

Are you telling me, that I, as an average car guy, knew how good the Alpha was going to be, but Ford didn't? Don't get me wrong, I think for does some stupid stuff from time to time, but they aren't THAT stupid...

Exactly this. No way Ford could not have know. Their Competitor Intelligence people are sharp and would no doubt have passed the info on to Engineering. The thing is, and it’s true of all the Domestic 3, there is very little incentive to spin your own development plans on a dime just because of something a cross-town competitor does that you don’t have a ready answer for. Earlier I commented that the Camaro team knew that the 2013 GT500 was coming in at 662 hp because my team told them. Camaro was already on the path of delivering the 580 hp ZL1 and the 505 hp Z28. At that point it is what it is. The Camaro Team focused on making both of those cars better all-around performers on the Zeta platform instead of chasing the horsepower.

Likewise, Ford was in a position where the D2C platform that the S197 and S550 are built in is what it is. Even though they knew Alpha was coming, they didn’t have enough time to adequately deal with it, so they focused on delivering horsepower, while gradually improving the D2C to eventually deliver the GT350 and GT500.