Ford, or more to the point Geoff Polites, put the Ford race drivers to good use during in the early 2000's. Geoff knew the importance of linking the race car side of things to the road cars, in that it appealed to profitable private buyers instead of the heavily discounted fleet sales. This approach had worked wonders for Holden and HSV, basically indoctrinating many generations of future Holden customers, while also keeping existing customers engaged.
The race drivers were mostly used to promote various special edition models such as the SR, Classic.......................
This particular commercial was for the AU II SR, which differed slightly to the AU III version. In effect, the AU II SR replaced the Falcon S sedan and was also based on the Forte. The SR shared the colour-coded grill, spoiler, chrome exhaust tip and XLS seat trim design with the Falcon S. However, it used the 16'' alloys and side skirts from the 75th Anniversary Futura, teamed with body coloured mirrors side protection moldings. It also got
ABS and cruise control from June 2001 production. SR was built between Apr-01 till Oct-01.
For the AU III, other than the clear side repeaters and removal of the colour coded grill, the SR remained unchanged from the AU II. However, the Ford also offered a wagon version, which actually gained sport suspension teamed with 16-inch XLS/XR6 HP wheels and roof rails. Built between Mar-02 to Sep-02, my uncle bought one of these as a heavily discounted run-out model, made even sweeter by Ford employee discount, the price list I actually had a look over, the prices were crazy cheap. Being heavily religious and deeply conservative, he naturally chose Winter White, but was frightened by the rear spoiler, thinking it would hamper rear vision...............clearly he never got to drive a T3 sedan.
Including TV commercials, Ford also made special edition XR's named after Marcos Ambrose, Russell Ingall and Craig Lowndes.
Sadly, once Geoff left the building, his implementations and vision only got more and more diluted as the years went on. His replacement, American Tom Gorman was very underwhelming. While I know there were many factors at play here, but it just seems to me that Gorman didn't keep the momentum going, he basically sat on his hands and road on the coat tails laid by Geoff in the previous years. He did get a nice shiny car to drive around in though.
I've said this before, but to me, it seemed like Ford Australia flourished when an Aussie was at the helm but then went downhill again when they inserted an American in the top office. I also note a lot of US executives sent here to run FOA ended up finishing their Ford career in Australia. Perhaps they couldn't hack it, as in they were sent here to run it down and disagreed with that, or they were sent here by the US big wigs to get rid of them? In the end, one man did the job, and he too left Ford and the auto industry.