- The Ford lightening is one
of my favorite cars ever. It inspired many OEMs to build
fast trucks of their own, and its influence is still felt today. (upbeat racing music) If the Lightning didn't prove that people wanted fast trucks, Ford would have likely
never produced the Raptor, which has imitators of its own. The Lightening occupies a strange place between ahead of its time and timeless. But what if I told you
it had a sibling that was even more groundbreaking,
but never saw the showroom. The lightning truck was supposed to have an SUV sister named
Thunder, (thunder sounds) but it never happened. Why haven't I, a huge fan of fast Fords, heard of this thing? Why was it killed? Was it middle management meddling, bean counter budget restrictions? Why hasn't anyone talked about this car? No joke, what I learned
forever changed how I see Ford. We're going to find the Thunder. Like any story in quarantine, this all began with a video call. I was talking to an industry
insider for another project when they let it slip
that they worked with Ford back when SVT was still a thing. This piqued my interest
because I'm a Ford fan especially of the SVT cars. SVT stands for special vehicle team. They were a division
within Ford whose sole job was to build hot rods that
Ford could sell to the people. They built some pretty awesome cars like the SVT Cobra Mustang,
the first gen Lightening, the second gen Lightening, the
SVT Contour, the SVT Focus, more SVT, Cobras, the Ford
GT, and the first Raptor. If you're a Ford fan, these
are some of your favorite cars. Maybe one of the coolest
things about the SVT lineup is that they were truly
meant to be attainable. The second gen Lightening cost about 45 grand in today's money. Which is pretty good when you consider that dealers usually want
around 70K for a Raptor today. My industry insider mentioned
that SVT had worked on an SUV. Which was weird because I
never heard of this project. I needed to know more. I went to Google and
found just five articles on the project FIVE, and
some of them were duplicates. I went over to YouTube and
I didn't find anything. I got really excited. This was my chance to break
a story two decades old. I'm going to find this freaking truck. Using my connections I was able to get in touch with John Coletti. Who is SVT's chief
engineer from 1994 to 2004. If there's anyone who could
tell me about this SUV and knew where it was today, it was John. He laid out the formation
of the SVT division at Ford. - You got to give credit to two people and these are high level executives; okay. And Bob Ruley was the vice president of sales and marketing at Ford. So he kicked it off and
there was a gentleman his name was John Plant. John plant was the first
SVT marketing manager. He worked for Bob Ruley
and he was asked to put this organization
together back in Iran. I'm going to guess around 1990...91. - SVT was situated as its
own division within Ford complete with their own
sales and marketing team. Separate from what John called
the mainstream Ford company. Oh, you listen to Ford.
I'm more of an SVT fan. You probably never heard of them. I mentioned earlier, the SVTs
goal was to build hot rods, but it's actually little
more complicated than that. Ford strategy was to use
SVT as a sort of polish on the Ford Oval, using
specialty products like performance cars to make the
Ford brand more sophisticated. - When the person sits in
the interior of the car he should feel like he's in a special car. So we paid special attention to the seats. All the touch zones, we call them the primary control touchstones. The steering wheels were unique. We put a nice leather on there. We put nice leather on the shifter to give the guy a feeling as
soon as he got in the car, that he was special. There was something unique about this car, a unique instrument panel, for example. So, you know, in that context that's what the engineers
were striving for. - This sounds like pretty
standard fare for an OEM. Many manufacturers employ
the same tactics today, when they want to make an
unassuming car more attractive. I mean, just look at Mazda or Honda. But something a lot of
brands typically don't do is aggressively pursue the kind of people that would buy enthusiast cars. - We wanted to create a
special sales experience, a special service experience. He was already pre-sold on the product, but now the experience was you need to handle them in a special way. Usually most dealerships would have one or two people that would
sell the SVT product. - So what exactly was the SVT product? I thought the team just
bolted on some go fast parts and called it a day, but it turned out that was another false idea of mine. SVT was actually a lot
more methodical than that. - The SVT product had to
have a significant horsepower increase over the base model
that it was coming from. Normally with performance
vehicles, you always ended up with what people
consider pretty harsh ride. You know, you really want to tighten up the suspension and everything else. We wanted a supple ride.
It doesn't need to be a teeth jarring harsh ride. - SVT was exacting in their approach. They had to make their cars
perform better in every way, but still engineer them to
be comfortable and reliable. So the customer could actually
drive the car every day. Anybody can throw some coil overs on a car but the real magic, the
real skill is engineering something that doesn't
become a chore to drive. Believe me, that is no easy task. I've ruined the ride on a few cars by changing up the suspension. You know, that's probably a good thing I'm not in charge of a
performance division. Yet. I can see it now
Donut performance group. Were putting spinning
things on everything, slam everything got louvers on the back, It comes with a free T-shirt. That's a million units sold right there. So through the 90s and early 2000s, SVT was putting out banger after banger. All of them classics, even the Contour. I mean who doesn't love a compact sedan making 200 horsepower that's sick. But how did SVT choose their next project in the first place? Well, that process was actually
pretty straight forward. - You know, the fact that
we were kind of limited to the Ford lineup of vehicles, we were always looking for what
can we do with the SVT rank. Can we put an SVT brand on this particular kind of product or that product. - After working their way
through most of Fords 90s lineup, it was only a matter of time
until SVT set their sights on one of the largest
vehicles at Ford at the time, the expedition. Hell yes, this is it
this is what we came for. The brainstorm for this idea
must have been next level. A supercharged meeting
of the minds so powerful you can hear tires
screeching, smell the exhaust in the air as the team
realize their genius. Or so I imagined. - One day, I remember
when he says, "Hey Coletti mind if we put a lightening
motor in a expedition?" I said, "well, that ought
to be interesting right?" And so they did it. And that's where the Thunder came from. - You know, you always
hear stories of people like John DeLorean, secretly
building cars for Pontiac, or someone extending the
line graph onto the wall writing a few dollar signs
to convince the higher ups. But it's not always that interesting. Sometimes a guy named
Coletti just says, okay. The build process was super simple. Since the F-150 and the
expedition used the same platform, SVT engineers took the
suspension and drive train from lightening, through the
parts, into the expedition SUV. This is why I was so excited
to hear about this car. This is a natural combination
like peanut butter and jelly or pineapple and ham you
get the savory practicality of an SUV and that sweet sweet
power from a supercharged V8. Let me know what to think
about Hawaiian pizza down in the comments.
I welcome your opinion. The newly formed Thunder
made 360 horsepower and 440 lb-ft of torque and
send it all to the rear wheels. This honking SUV to zero
to 60 in 5.6 seconds. Nearly four seconds quicker
than a stock expedition. Talk about hauling groceries. - I still remember we
were at Milan Drag way, and we had rented the track for something, And the guys brought the Thunder out. It had three row seating so we had what eight people in, and it still ran a 13.87. And I said, "that's pretty damn cool you can put eight people
in the thing, right?" Still run a sub 14 second
with a full-size SUV. - Not only was the Thunder
quick, but SVT also fitted a lightning style
bumper and wheels to the car which totally completed the look. I gotta be honest choosing
between this or the Lightning would be like choosing
between pineapple or a ham. I just, I can't, I gotta have both. Today fast SUV's are everywhere. The Thunder was way ahead of the curve. Ford would have set the pace
for the industry once again. The origin story for the
Thunder was incredibly anticlimactic, but it
did get me wondering why the suits at Ford didn't
let SVT build this thing. The answer to that question kind of blew everything up. - In the case of the Thunder part of it had to do with the fact that
it had a limited lifecycle, and there was going to be a
new, a new expedition coming. And this one was based
on the old expedition. So it was just a matter of timing. - John told me that if the expedition had around four years left in
its lifespan instead of two the Thunder might've happened
but it was out of his control. This was not an answer I was expecting. It seemed too easy, to reasonable. As my conversation with John went on I felt my preconceived notions
about Ford being challenged. When I first learned about the Thunder the gears in my head started turning, and I started to blame its
death on those faceless suits in management and the fun
suckers down in accounting. We here on Donut have
told countless stories of outlaw engineers,
building fun cars that flew in the face of company leadership. It's always a great story. But what I was learning
was that it was just that a story. I built SVT up in my mind as
a scruffy band of outcasts defying the suits upstairs
and building the cars they wanted on their terms. But that just wasn't the case. - And you got to keep mine
and in a company like Ford and this is true for all big companies, when something like this starts up you have to have some
pretty high level executives kind of protecting it to the let it grow. - It turns out that if
corporations operated, how I imagine them to
with divisions fighting and plotting against each
other without a common goal, they wouldn't be very good businesses. When talking to John he had
nothing but good things to say about his time at SVT. It sounds like it was a really awesome place to work. I think the most important
thing I've learned with this video is that sometimes the truth is boring and that's okay. The Dyatlov pass incident
was just an avalanche. Those bears had the last name,
Berenstain, not Bernstein. Not everything is explained
by some grand conspiracy. Sometimes things don't pan out because of factors that are out of your control. You just got to move on and try your best on your next project, which
is something SVT did a lot. - The old Thunderbird, the
four-seater Thunderbird, I think we looked at it in
around 94, 95, the SVT bird. The problem there was when we found out when we were developing it
there was only another year left on the mainstream product
and everybody thought, geez. It doesn't make sense to go
ahead and put this in production for one year when the base
product is going away, right? They were going to stop
making the Thunderbird. Another one that didn't make
it was a an Escort coop. We made a turbo version of that. Internally it was called the CT 120. The trouble with that is
that we just could never get it to have the refinement
that we would like. So it ended up in the cemetery. - Those are just two examples of cars that SVT couldn't make happen
even if there were cool ideas. Especially, that Thunderbird. Just a quick side note,
SVT actually did build one of these things and it looks super badass. But like the expedition,
the timing wasn't right. The important thing is though the team didn't get discouraged and let those failures stop
them from pushing forward. Despite the setbacks, SVT
was able to keep moving and produce cars that we
still talk about today, but still after learning so much from John there is still one
question I needed to ask. Do you know if there are any
Thunders left around anywhere? - No. We only had the one
that we built, you know, I mean anybody can build one. I mean, it's one of those
things all you almost you've got to do is get all the parts lift off of the lightning and
stick it in an expedition. - So I can't end this
video with footage of us uncovering the Thunder
prototype like I wanted to. How I planned out in my head, but Hey, that's out of my hands. Sometimes things just don't pan out, and we should build one of these suckers. A huge thank you to John Coletti for taking the time out
of his day to talk with me and sharing his experiences
and insights from the industry. I hope you found it as
enlightening as I did. If you're a Doughnut super freak and you want more content hit
that join button down below. Sign up for the Donut underground, check out our podcast, Pass Gas. We got some more shows on the way. Follow donut on social media @donut media. Follow me @nolanjsykes. Tag me in some pics of your
lightenings if he got them. Be kind, take care of each other. See you next time.
