Saleen and Ford GT

jercarnut · 08-26-04, 08:49 PM

A group of Saleen Reps. are in our area for a big Saleen Promotion at the largest Ford Dealership in the region. I notice over the week end that one of these was boosting about Saleen's heavy involement in the Ford GT. He explained that the aluminum chassis and body was done at the Ford facllity all interior instruments, all paint work is completed in another facillity by Steve Saleen folks. Evertything that I read on this forum and else where, that I can remember was that Ford decided to do the work in house. But not being absolutely sure I have made no comments. If the cars are built in house I finds these comments very interesting. Any of you well informed folks that can help me out with this let me know.

Mark Worthington · 08-26-04, 09:47 PM

I can't answer your question, but it wouldn't be the first time that Steve Saleen was more about sizzle than steak.

Ron Earp · 08-26-04, 10:06 PM

I was thinking that Saleen had a fairly heavy hand in the car. However, I would need to dig through my car rags to find out the details because I don't remember them off the top of my head.

Mark is right on that - most of Saleen's stuff, barring the recent S7, were typically light on the performance side of things. There were exceptions, but mostly I just saw large Saleen badges, seats, windshield banners, and some aftermarket shocks on cars.

Chris Notley · 08-27-04, 05:01 PM

Having first hand knowledge of the S7 and S7R Saleen projects I can confirm that the program, virtually in its entirety for both road and race car versions was completely designed from a clean sheet of paper by Ray Mallock Ltd here in the UK. Several of the S7R race cars remain here in Europe and are still being campaigned successfully in various GTS formulae.
An early contribution to the race cars was the Saleen built Ford 7.0 ltr engines and which with monotanous regularity would fail due to inappropriate choice of components, ie Le Mans 24 Hour motors built with lightweight sprint pistons !!
Saleen Inc eventually took over and transferred production to California, mainly in an attempt to build road cars.
The beautiful design has shown tremendous winning ability since its debut during 2001 but unfortunately was not developed in the early days to its fullest potential mainly through a lack of financial ability from its name sake.

Mike Dozier · 08-27-04, 06:47 PM

My understanding is that Saleen was heavily involved in the
prototypes....but all production cars are being assembled
at SVO at Ford's Wixom, MI plant. I drove by it last week
and they have what appears to be the original yellow mule
on a stand perched atop the building. What parts Saleen
supplies to Wixom I do not know.

MikeD

Dan Weilacher · 08-28-04, 11:37 AM

From what I remember reading I thought the body and chasiss was built by Alcoa aluminum ? I know a friend that worked for Saleen for a few years on the S-7 . Not allot good to say about him, lol. He wasnt sure if the doors were going to be locked by the feds when he showed up for work every morning. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shocked.gif[/img]