The financial crisis of 2008 led to trouble for many manufacturers including Subaru, Suzuki, General Motors and Ford either withdrawing or minimising support in the motorsport arena.
Ford was dominating the V8 Supercars Championship in 2008 prior to Darwin having taken 10 out of a possible 14 victories in response to Holden winning the previous two titles.
When the financial crisis hit, Ford’s V8 Supercar program was a major victim and the decision to cull teams proved a major mistake.
Ford announced prior to the Darwin round of the championship it was pulling significant backing from several teams, but there had been a rumour of a full exit from the brand from the sport, though this failed to be true.
Affected were Triple Eight Race Engineering, Dick Johnson Racing and Britek, with the explanation for Ford’s withdraw of support in reference to the lack of blue on the liveries of each team’s entry.
“I think it came down to a bit of colour discrimination at the end of the day,” said Triple Eight Race Engineering team owner Roland Dane.
“Ford – as they’re entitled to do – decided that they needed to have predominately blue cars, I believe, representing them as the official brand carries and we’ve of course got a naming rights sponsor that’s got a particularly fetching shade of fluro.
“I think we’ve fallen foul to be honest of circumstances in terms of differing branding ideas from competing sponsors if you like on the car.”
Long-time Ford team owner Dick Johnson had just come out of a poor financial position thanks to a new title sponsor, but was now needing to scramble to find additional sponsorship to cover the loss of Ford.
“We’ve had a lot of highs and lows for the period I’ve been in the sport, but this was totally unexpected,” said Johnson.
“We’ll just re-group, sit down and see where our options are because I’m a great believer in turning negatives into positives, and one door closes, another one opens, so let’s hope it’s a good one.”
It was a dramatic move by Ford to drop both teams, especially considering Triple Eight Race Engineering was developing the FG Falcon Supercar to debut in 2009.
The two teams took very different paths, with DJR remaining with Ford and some 10-years later becoming the homologation Ford team when the Mustang was introduced for the 2019 season.
Now under the co-ownership of American entrepreneur Roger Penske, DJR was very successful as Scott McLaughlin took three championships before moving to IndyCar.
Triple Eight Race Engineering won the title in 2008 and 2009 for Ford, but when it changed to Holden it added another eight until the Gen3 regulations were introduced at the start of 2023.
Due to the ending of the brand, Holden turned to Chevrolet and Triple Eight Race Engineering continued to win when it took the 2024 title.
Then, another surprise came when Triple Eight Race Engineering announced it was making the transition back to Ford for the 2026 Repco Supercars Championship.