Ford Mustang Bullitt and Mach 1 enthusiasts!! Strap in for an exciting and extensive interview with MRT CEO, Scott Hoag, and Muscle Mustangs & Fast Fords Magazine, right before the birth of MRT in 2002. After a brief history of Scott’s background, McGraw and Scott discuss what sets the Mustang Bullitt and Mach 1 apart from the GT, some of the struggles to bring these specialty rides to production, and how Scott and his team made it happen! Strap in with a cup of coffee and enjoy Part 1 of this great conversation!

Muscle Mustangs & Fast Fords Magazine Interview:

We talk to the man in charge of customizing the Mustang into the Bullitt, the new Mach 1, and future special models to come.

Some guys get the calling a little later than other guys, and one of the later guys, in terms of Team Mustang at Ford Motor Company, is Scott Hoag, who currently holds the title of customization manager, a job created for him by former Team Mustang boss Art Hyde. He’s a seasoned veteran of the Ford way of doing things, coming from Ford more than 16 years ago after several years spent, literally, working on the railroad, specifically the Burlington Northern Railroad, for three years.

He started his education at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, switched to St. Cloud State in his home state of Minnesota, getting his degree in quantitative methods and information systems, later copping an MBA from Wayne State in Detroit and another masters in engineering at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, both obtained while holding down his full-time gig at Ford.

At Ford, he’s worked at the engine division, in manufacturing, in light truck on Windstar and Explorer, then as staff engineer on the Ford Product Development System re-engineering project, then into the alternate fuels program working on the methanol fuel-cell Focus. For the past three years, he’s worked at Team Mustang on the GT, the Bullitt, and now on the Mach 1 program. He was nearly thrown out of his own family, which paid allegiance to GM, when he bought a rare 1980 Mach 1 428 Cobra Jet Ram-Air 4-speed, a cherry Arizona car he owned for 34 years.

McCraw reports: “Scott Hoag is one of those thoroughgoing young professionals at Ford that make you feel that, while the present may be rocky, the future is going to be bright and rich and full of great cars. He has a quick smile, an even quicker wit, and a very direct approach that’s refreshing among Ford executives. As we drove around Dearborn in the blue Mach 1 prototype, the story of how it came to be unfolded quickly, because the busy Hoag had exactly one hour to spare.”

MMFF: How did all of this customization business get started at Team Mustang, anyway?
Hoag: It started as one of those quick hallway meetings. We found out that corporate design was doing something about filling up an empty display space at the Los Angeles Auto Show back in 1999. Through the guidance of Sean Tant, our chief designer at the time, and a group of people who got together at Roush, we put together the package that became the Bullitt Mustang concept vehicle, and it caught us literally and favorably by surprise.
The crowd at the LA Auto Show made it the car to see and the car to talk about. Having reasonably close touch with the Mustang customer base, we listened, and we heard what they were telling us.
So we looked into it a little deeper, and we decided that such a project could be the first shot through the cannon. From the results we got in LA, we put together the content we would need in terms of chassis and powertrain to go to the exterior and interior cues that Sean had developed. We asked ourselves, how do we deliver that quietly mean-to-the-bone look and deliver the goods? We put down a set of parameters for the engine, the chassis, and especially the exhaust system, and said these are the key deliverables. We wanted a car that looks good, goes good, feels good, sounds good, and we made sure you were planted in the seat.

MMFF: And you also had to find out whether the company really wanted to do the car, right?
Hoag: We were just leveraging what we knew, and what we’ve done in the past, and we have a complete vehicle program, ready to go into the company’s cycle plan. We presented our approach and our business case, and it was received, maybe a little bit reluctantly at first, with the expectation that we would not be able to deliver on it…

MMFF: How did that proceed? Did you just take it to Richard Parry-Jones, your chief engineer at Ford, and tell him that it was such a big hit in LA he simply had to approve it?
Hoag: We certainly had Richard Parry-Jones endorsement and blessing in terms of a product, handling, and vehicle dynamics, but we had to prove to ourselves that it was appropriate, safe, and that it delivered the essence we were trying to convey. He was very instrumental in guiding and steering the car to success that way. But the Bullitt had to stand on its own in terms of business and be able to pull its own weight, with a marketing plan and a customer we were targeting. We had to make money on every car and make every customer delighted that they bought one.

MMFF: How did the Bullitt program program work with Team Mustang and with SVT? After all, they had be producing limited-run cars and trucks since the first Cobra in 1993. Was there any jealousy internally?
Hoag: No, we worked with SVT, and I was the liaison between the core team and SVT–

MMFF: Did you go over there and attend their Wednesday pizza luncheon meetings?
Hoag: Exactly. We knew exactly what they were working on, and they knew what we were working on. The Bullitt was a step above the GT, leveraging nostalgia appropriately, and strengthening the Mustang brand. It was filling the gap between the GT and the Cobra in terms of price and performance. So it was in no way, shape or form in competition in terms of its essence and its performance. The Cobra is king! Always has be, always will be, always needs to be! These cars, the Mach 1 and the Bullitt, are meant to fit and fill the space between. Cobra is about maximum performance, while the Bullitt and the Mach 1 are about Mustang’s history and nostalgia, taking us back and letting us remember what the Mustang is about.

MMFF: Did your group actually have the Bullitt and the Mach 1 on the drawing boards at the same time, or did the Mach 1 come along later on as a design concept for the 2002 New York Auto Show?
Hoag: The evolution for the Mach 1 took a little bit of a different path. As we were proceeding through the development of the Bullitt and seeing the pieces come together, we realized, hey, we’re going to pull this thing off! The surprise for us was not necessarily the exotic content of the product, but the timing. From the time we got the information back from the New York Auto Show until we got to the point of building and selling it was only 12 months. Usually, the pressure to deliver on that amount of unique content is extreme, and the usual attitude is, you can’t do it!

MMFF: So, after the success of the Bullitt in terms of publicity and sales, you were sort of being asked by your peers, what are you going to do for an encore?
Hoag: Now that the door was opened to us, we looked at the rich, rich heritage of the Mustang, all of the neat things that have happened throughout history. It was just a playground. It was just a coincidence, I guess, that I own a Mach 1 Mustang with a shaker hood scoop. As we were describing the Mach 1 essence in terms of what its attributes must be in order to deliver on the promise, obviously the shaker hood and ram air were two aspects that were critical to the DNA that makes a Mach 1 a Mach 1.

MMFF: Obviously, the Mach 1 was going to be both more complex and more expensive to build than the Bullitt, because of the brand new hood stamping, the ram air scoop, the air handling equipment under the hood, and the higher quantity of cars you plan to build, around 6500 to 7000 this time.
Hoag: We sold 5582 Bullitts, so the volumes are very close. The biggest difference is that the Bullitt hand only a four-month project cycle. With the Mach 1, it will be on the market for an entire model year.

Join us next time for Part 2 of this blast from the past interview as the conversation continues into the design for the Mach 1 Mustang, the essential shaker hood, and more!