FPV's 351kw GT-F more powerful than HSV's 430kw GTS, How did this happen?

[cashie]

The last XR8 will essentially be what the GS was IMO. Either the 335 or 315 tuned motor, small brakes, skinny tyres... that's what i'm guessing anyway. Will still be an awesome package and should be priced accordingly to the SS. Fantastic bang for buck i reckon.

I suppose time will tell though.

I think there will be a model with Brembos etc too to compete with the SS-V Redline.

[blackvussii]

yeah im looking forward to seeing to seeing what they do with the xr8.
id take gts over a gt
but id take the xr8 over a ss if they are priced the same. id put up with the interior to get in a new car with that engine new for $50k!

[JimmyXR6T04]

I think there will be a model with Brembos etc too to compete with the SS-V Redline.

Maybe... But i reckon the factory supercharged 335 motor alone would be enough to sway many that are sitting on the fence. The brembo's are nice, but realistically in every day driving they're over kill, and i haven't yet needed them (but grateful i have them if i do!). Either the 315 or 335 tune, with leather, and updated interior for about 50k would be nice package.

yeah im looking forward to seeing to seeing what they do with the xr8.
id take gts over a gt
but id take the xr8 over a ss if they are priced the same. id put up with the interior to get in a new car with that engine new for $50k!

Keep in mind the interior will be new, and fresh. So you might actually like the new interior of the new falcon!

[planetdavo]

Keep in mind the interior will be new, and fresh. So you might actually like the new interior of the new falcon!

Ford's seriously short development dollars might not make the interior anywhere as new as you think...

[FFAMan]

Maybe... But i reckon the factory supercharged 335 motor alone would be enough to sway many that are sitting on the fence. The brembo's are nice, but realistically in every day driving they're over kill, and i haven't yet needed them (but grateful i have them if i do!). Either the 315 or 335 tune, with leather, and updated interior for about 50k would be nice package.



Keep in mind the interior will be new, and fresh. So you might actually like the new interior of the new falcon!

There's no way the new XR8 with 335, staggered 8/9" rims brembo's etc will be $50, id see it lineball with Redline, high 50's DA.

[offshore]

The XR8 would want to come out with 275 rear as well its not right that a supercharged V8 has to try and get traction through 245 tyres.

[JimmyXR6T04]

Ford's seriously short development dollars might not make the interior anywhere as new as you think...

True, but surely they'll adapt some of the stuff out of the mondeo etc... i guess time will tell, but you're right, it may not be as much as some people are expecting

There's no way the new XR8 with 335, staggered 8/9" rims brembo's etc will be $50, id see it lineball with Redline, high 50's DA.

I agree, i don't even think they'll offer the XR8 with staggered wheels or brembos. I'm tipping it will be 50-55k without staggered wheels and brembos.

The XR8 would want to come out with 275 rear as well its not right that a supercharged V8 has to try and get traction through 245 tyres.

I don't think it will, but who knows? They put up with the 245s on the GT since 2010, and even then only the R-Spec and GTF got 9" rears. I agree though, the 245s were not up to the task.

[macca_779]

The new xr8 will be a brilliant base car for mods as is the xr6-t. Sure it won't be as capable as a gts, but it shouldn't be at around half the price. Bang for buck though and after a few mods it will be brilliant and better than any lsx based commodore.

[adr8]

Just seen this posted on AFF from a member who is an employee of Street Machine.

I guess it's time for me to weigh in. I've read most of the comments and had a good laugh at some, especially at the conspiracy theory people who think that this is some kind of attack on Ford Australia.

Here's how all this came about. As most know I work for Street Machine and I've been a member here for years. I play with Fords, Holden and Chryslers, if it was said that I favoured any brand it would be Chrysler but I'll play with anything.

At Street Machine we share office space with Wheels, Motor and Unique cars, and I sit on the other side of the cubicle wall from the Wheels guys and the subject of the dynoing the GTS and GT-F came up. The Wheels guys asked me to recommend a workshop and I said VCM Performance.

Why? Because's it's a roomy and tidy workshop with an easy to access dyno and they're friendly guys. I've filmed there before and it looks good on video. No other reason.

Wheels were only going to get dyno figures for print but I suggested we film the whole thing and my boss Simon suggested I film it and we share the footage for a simultaneous release across Wheels and Street Machine because we have two different audiences.

So the guys rang Mario at VCM on my advice and he was happy to do the test there. We drove the cars there and because the Ford has no intercooler we decided to put it on the rollers second to give it some cool down time.

There was no fanfare, no conspiracy, just roll the cars on, test, and roll them off and film the results. Here's the Street Machine video in case you haven't seen it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tME5so6VbqU

As you see the GTS made 330rwkw on it's first run and it made 327rwkw on it's second run. Now I've filmed ALOT of dyno runs in the past and I saw nothing funky at all, and generally, in my experience, we'll see that the HP at the rear wheels will roughly equal the KW at the flywheel +/-5%. So when the GTS made 442.5rwhp on a claimed 430kw I didn't think that was unusual.

Then we ran the GT-F on the rollers. No one expected the GT-F to beat the GTS but we felt that if it got within 20kw that would be a respectable result given the claimed 351kw. Now we all know about the "transient overboost" (stupid name) which provides up to 404kw. I was at the GT-F launch at You Yangs and I asked the engineers flat out if the car made any more boost under that condition and they admitted that it didn't. It's all in the timing based on intake heat - basically if the intake temps are too high you don't get the full output. It's as simple as that.

Anyway we thought that if it made over 310rwkw or 415rwhp that would be a respectable result. First run was 308.8rwkw and the second run went 304.5rwkw and we knew it was only going to get worse if we kept going, so we let the GT-F cool down in the dyno room for 10mins or so with the dyno fan on full blast. In the true spirit on the dyno test we probably shouldn't have but we wanted to see if the FPV could get over 310rwkw.

After the cool down we ran the car up again at it made the 311.3rwkw figure that everyone seems to have a problem with. So we went with the best figures of both. Maybe we should have averaged the figures, but that wouldn't help the FPV either. But we felt the Ford had performed quite well in the circumstances and having a separation of just 19kw or 25hp at the wheels showed the cars were going to be close in performance.

At this point we decided to wait until Monday the 7th to release the results, which was our first mistake. We should have just gone straight back to the office, edited the footage to suit our respective audiences and let fly.

Then someone gave Ford a heads up on the results and the phone lines between Ford and the Bauer media office basically caught fire. Ford were not happy and to be honest I don't really understand their problem. Yes they didn't make as much as the HSV GTS, but it was a lot closer than anyone who knew dynos thought it would be.

Look at the facts:

1) Both cars were auto
2) Both cars were driven straight to VCM and run as is
3) You can't compare different brand dynos. Every business has their dyno set up differently and there's variation across brands. The only way to make a fair comparison is same day, same dyno
5) Ford has underclaimed the supercharged Miami V8 from Day 1 and this just confuses people
6) The FPV has quad cams, but is only 5-litres and has no intercooler
7) The HSV might be a pushrod V8, but it has 6.2-litres and an intercooler

If Ford/FPV wanted the GT-F to be the big dog of Australian performance they should have put an intercooler in the bloody thing. We all know what a difference that makes to them.

At the launch I asked why with the GT-F being the last GT Falcon and everything that went with that was it only 351kw? They said that 351 was an iconic number and they wanted to honour that, which is fine, but I said 427 is an iconic number for Ford guys as well and it would have put it more in line with the HSV GTS. There was a lot of heming and hawing and foot shuffling because they knew their car didn't have the power of the HSV GTS.

But now they're claiming it makes as much as 351rwkw? Give me a break.

So anyway, as we prepared to release our videos Ford threatened and pleaded with Wheels for the results to not be published (we didn't field any calls form Ford at Street Machine, maybe because Simon was in QLD). This went right to the top of the food chain at Ford. I can't say too much about all that, but there were at least a dozen calls back and forth by my reckoning.

Ford claimed there must have been something wrong with GT-F-014 to make such a "low figure" and they claimed they tested it themselves and claimed they made somewhere close to 351rwkw. We at Street Machine were happy they we had given both cars a fair go and wanted to go ahead with the video Monday night, but Wheels wanted to hold back because there was more talks planned with Ford. So we decided to sit on it.

Talks between Wheels and Ford continued on Tuesday morning and then about midday Motoring.com.au went to print with "their results" (suspiciously convenient) which we've all seen. So we hit the go button with both our videos. Wheels went first, and we were a couple hours later with ours because no-one was in the SM office to click go.

Naturally the results differ because different dyno and different cars, but both results used the same GT-F-014 and somehow they managed 348rwkw where we managed 311rwkw, which is a huge difference in anyone's language.

Why the difference? Well look at the torque figures that Motoring.com.au are claiming. They claim 721Nm for the GT-F when we all know that Ford have torque limited the GT-F (and all the previous Miami powered cars) to 570Nm. Did Ford turn the torque protection off in the software before handing the car to Motoring.com.au for their "independent test"? Who knows?

It makes you wonder.

At the end of the day I have no dog in this fight, we only test Fords and Holdens occasionally at SM, but what started a simple, "Hey, what do you reckon they make on the dyno?" turned into a massive **** fight.

At the end of the day you have to ask yourself, without bringing brand loyalty into it, will an unintercooled 5-litre make as much power as an intercooled 6.2-litre? If Ford wanted to win this battle they just had to build the right car (ie: intercooled with 400kw+), we all wanted to see it.

[Plenty]

The new xr8 will be a brilliant base car for mods as is the xr6-t. Sure it won't be as capable as a gts, but it shouldn't be at around half the price. Bang for buck though and after a few mods it will be brilliant and better than any lsx based commodore.

The VF redline will still do it for outright driving. The XR8 will be quicker that's for sure, put em both on a track and I reckon the XR8 will be the one doing the drive of shame. You just can't hide the that chassis, it'll be a good car for the money and a modders dream but again it'll only have that one thing. Power!

[macca_779]

And I think that will be enough. Handling can be fixed cheaply. Fitting a forged supercharged engine into a commodore. Not so much

[Plenty]

And I think that will be enough. Handling can be fixed cheaply. Fitting a forged supercharged engine into a commodore. Not so much

Yep true, but it wouldn't be as easy as you think to get the same level of handling with the same amount of compliance etc. As a molded track car though I reckon she'll be a bit of a weapon for the price.

[Pickles]

adr8, thank you for the FACTS......with NO bias.
Pickles.

[Jamolad]

What I find interesting is what the SM guy points out re the GT-F making 721Nm in that run where it pulled 348rwkw - given those in the GT-F corner only want to trust motoring.com.au it is interesting that in June motoring.com.au posted Ford engineers said the changes to the GT-F tune allowed it to go "beyond 569Nm and up to 650!".

This one made 721Nm.

So there is no torque limiting on GT-Fs - or just this GT-F - or just this GT-F at that point in time?

Starting to think it made 721Hmmm

[whitels1ss]

How about a Dodge?