Ford Oz still worth shouting about

In Ford Australia's 3D set-up, you can 'drive' a car and check out the interior of concept vehicles.

Damien O'Carroll takes a look at global design studio

Innovations for Millions is what Ford Australia was calling the event we were being shepherded into at the company's headquarters in Broadmeadows, Melbourne.

Quite who these millions were was never explained, but at its heart was to showcase to the world's media what exactly Ford did in Australia, especially now that the decision has been made to shut down production.

It is always easy to dismiss these things as flag-waving exercises, which it actually was, but the unexpected and impressive thing about the whole exercise is how much Ford Australia are doing that is worth waving a flag about.

Over a fairly intensive two-day programme we were taken through the design process for an all-new SUV, had a close-up look at the new Mustang without one actually being present, had a play with the next generation of Ford's Sync infotainment interface and were treated to a fascinating tour of Ford's You Yangs Proving Grounds.

The first thing that may surprise you is the number of times that the phrase "one of (and then a very small number)" was used in reference to Ford Australia. The Ford Australia Design Centre is "one of three" main global design studios that report directly to Ford's design director, Moray Callum.

The Ford Immersive Vehicle Environment (FiVE) is "one of two" virtual reality facilities in the Ford world, with the other being in Detroit. And Australia is "one of three" continents in the world that Ford has proving grounds in, the other two being in America and Europe.

Ford's large SUV, the Everest, was spotted at the company's Australia R&D centre.

All of these things mean Ford Australia is the pointy part of the pyramid that makes up the Ford Asia/Pacific region, or - to put it in strictly corporate (and slightly dorky) terms - Ford Australia is the "Centre of Excellence" for the Asia/Pacific region.

This means that Ford Oz takes the lead on vehicles developed not only for this region, but also gets to take the lead on certain global products, with the popular, successful and staggeringly good Ranger ute being the first global project headed by the Aussie outpost.

The current project that will have relevance to the local market is the Everest. The Everest is a big, handsome SUV based on the same platform as the Ranger ute. It is not a replacement for the Territory - it is bigger and a far, far more capable off-roader - and it boasts a different nose to the Ranger.

But here's a small, super-secret tip that we scavenged from our time at the Proving Grounds - we did see a number of Rangers with disguised noses that looked strangely similar to that of the Everest. Expect the Ranger facelift to be "somewhat inline" with the Everest then ...

A look at the new Ford Mustang at the company's Australia design centre.

On to the FiVE lab, where we were treated to a close-up look at the new Mustang, including exploring the interior, engine bay and even inside the engine. All without a real Mustang being present.

A bank of small monitors on one wall, overshadowed by a massive HD one above them, is the most showy thing in FiVE. The rest is done by the innocuous-looking array of small cameras around the outside of the room, the powerful computers sitting innocently under the desk and a set of virtual reality goggles.

The colossal processing power in FiVE (there is a staggering 95,000GB of RAM available) makes for a photorealistic virtual reality environment once you put the goggles on. You would swear that you are standing on a Californian roadside, near the beach, walking around a brand new Ford Mustang. But then you can shatter the illusion by sticking your head through the bonnet and literally into the engine. That is how insanely detailed it is.

All of this links up directly to Detroit, where a similar facility exists, meaning that designs can be tweaked before clay models are even started. As Ford's digital innovation manager Peter Bunting said, "It actually means a lot of extra work for us at the start, but it saves so much more work down the line".

The same probably goes for the "breadboard" room where we were treated to a preview of the new Sync 2.

The room was called this because of the "breadboards" that looked like large boxes built out of Meccano that had the entire electrical system of a car attached to them. We were warned that certain areas might be a bit "zappy", so to watch what we touched (avoid live wires, etc), but the demonstration showed just how far Ford's development of the Sync system and voice recognition has come since it was launched in 2007.

Voice recognition plays a large part of Sync 2, and it certainly had no problem recognising the Australian accent of our Ford host. Sync recognises more than 10,000 voice commands, including some as wilfully vague as "I'm hungry" (it will proceed to search for nearby restaurants in the navigation).

These things are but the tip of a very media-shy iceberg of projects that Ford Australia is working on. And it was a fascinating glimpse into how good the Ford empire is at splitting up its responsibilities into countries that know best how to build certain vehicles. After all, if you wanted to build a tough ute and SUV that could hack it anywhere in the world, then where best to develop it but in Australia?