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WALKINSHAW INTERESTED IN EXPANDING PERFORMANCE BUSINESS WITH FORD

WALKINSHAW INTERESTED IN EXPANDING PERFORMANCE BUSINESS WITH FORD

By Dan McCarthy

While nothing was confirmed at the Walkinshaw Andretti United announcement of the swap from Holden
to Ford for Gen3, Ryan Walkinshaw has admitted he is interested in any opportunity to expand his automotive enterprise, Walkinshaw Performance, with the new Ford alliance – although there are no commercial plans in place currently.

Walkinshaw Performance built high performance Holden road cars with the HSV brand for decades and in recent years has imported, converted and sold the Chevrolet Camaro as well as having relationships with Volkswagen and importers of the Dodge Ram light truck range.

However with the legendary Holden brand no more, Walkinshaw explained he would be open to deal with Ford.

He was asked in the press conference announcing the partnership between his Supercars Championship team Walkinshaw Andretti United and Ford ahead of the introduction of the new Gen3 regulations in 2023.

“If you’re asking me if there’s an opportunity to expand my automotive business with new customers, I think it’s a pretty obvious answer … of course,” Walkinshaw said.

“What a fantastic brand – they’ve got some great products!”

Walkinshaw explained that Walkinshaw Performance could be extremely beneficial to the Blue Oval brand across the nation.

“We know that we’re the leading automotive design, engineering and manufacturing business in Australia at the moment, so we feel we can add a lot of value there.”

Walkinshaw however stressed that the move was made solely for the sake of the race team and had nothing to do with the automotive business.

“At the end of the day, that (Walkinshaw Performance) is not why we made this decision,” he explained.

“It’s really important to make it clear that WAU is a partnership with myself, Michael Andretti and Zac Brown – the only affiliation between that and my automotive group is me.

“What we do on the racetrack is not connected to what we do off track – on the automotive side, you’ve got multiple business partners and customers there.

“But this relationship, and this discussion we’re having today is purely motorsport.

“Our focus on the race team has nothing to do with what we’re looking to do on the automotive side. It’s purely to go and partner with Ford into the future and go and win races and win championships.”

Ford Australia President and CEO Andrew Birkic, who was also in the same press conference, was asked about a possible Walkinshaw Performance and Ford alliance responded with the same perspective as Walkinshaw:

“The answer is they are separate businesses – so today we are talking motorsport and there is no discussion on the other side of it,” he stated.

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