When we heard Brian Wolfe...
When we heard Brian Wolfe was taking over at Ford Racing, this was the first memory that surfaced: Brian getting with the program at Super Ford's 5.0 Shootout in 1997. By then, Brian's hardcore Pro 5.0 exploits were tailing off due to his growing work commitments, but he made the time to bring out both the storied red racer and the blue project car.
We also forecast a general sensitivity to as many areas of amateur motorsports as feasible. Though engines and drag racing are his personal passion, Brian the professional will be equally happy to see Ford circle-track and road-racing fans excel along with legions of happy street fans.
Rejoice brother, one of us has his foot on the Ford Racing throttle in Dearborn. What follows is our first conversation with Brian in this capacity. With any luck, it will be the first of many.
5.0&SF: We didn't know your father was such a Henry Ford fan. Tell us more about that.
Brian Wolfe: My dad was born in 1912 and grew up in a small town called Lufton. He was a farmer; he knew Henry Ford as the guy who was putting the world on wheels, make it easier on the farmers. My dad, liking cars in very rural Michigan, saw Henry Ford doubling wages to $5 a day just because he thought it was the right thing to do, and putting factories in all parts of the country to employ people. These were the stories my dad used to tell me. He was always just intrigued by them.
5.0&SF: Do you have any conscious memory of deciding to go to work at Ford?
BW: Oh, definitely. That was my whole goal as a kid. That's what I wanted to do: go to work for Ford. When I was in high school, my brothers were draftsman-die designers, progressive die, stamping machines-and my dad was a die-maker. They met one of their buddies on Gratiot in the '60s, a guy named Coletti. My brother said, "You aren't going to get into Ford as a draftsman, they just aren't hiring like that. You need to get an engineering degree like Coletti did." And I was like, 'Ugh.' I was already a junior in high school, but as luck would have it, I liked math, so I was taking advanced math classes and I liked the physics, so my background wasn't too far away. But I was also taking vocational drafting classes as my plan was to become a draftsman, follow the family tradition. But I thought, You know, if I have to go to college, I guess I'll try it.
Though the red car morphed...
Though the red car morphed into a wild card, the blue coupe showed Brian still had a soft spot for the GT-40 gear with a splash of nitrous. Back when SVO and Brian developed these parts, they were the cutting edge of Ford performance. You can only assume such ahead-of-the-curve development will continue with Brian at the helm of Ford Racing.
Now, my parents-my dad, a die maker with six kids-couldn't foot the bill for college. I was working as a draftsman in high school, and I applied to Wayne State, Lawrence Tech, and the University of Michigan at Dearborn. I remember Michigan was on semesters, so you had to pay two times a year-I had to pay my own way, remember-and Wayne State and Lawrence Tech were on trimesters, so you had to pay three times a year. One semester at Michigan was cheaper than one trimester at the other schools, so I reasoned it had a better reputation anyway and it wasn't going to cost me as much, so I'd try that. I went to school full time and worked part time for the first year and that went pretty good, so I kept going. I graduated from the University of Michigan, located in Dearborn, so it all seemed to make sense to me. It all came together.
Once I became an engineer, I didn't have career aspirations, like a supervisor or a management person. I didn't know enough about that. I didn't know how the inner part of a company operated. I just thought, Okay, I'm going to be an engineer, that's cool. That's all I wanted to do.
5.0&SF: Run us through the highlights of your employment at Ford.
BW: I was hired into Heavy Truck Engineering, and I went through what they call the Ford College Graduate Training Program. When you get out of school, you know a lot about the theoretical stuff, [but] how to operate as an engineer within Ford, you don't know that. Ford has a great program where over two years they give you multiple assignments to teach you how to really apply the engineering you learned. My passion was always engines, and after about three years at Ford, I went to work in Engine Engineering; then the job I really loved the most, doing base engine development-actually doing the test and development program of the engine. I was working on combustion systems, lubrication systems at the dyno lab, figuring out the right cam events, intake runner lengths, combustion chamber characteristics, oil pump sizing, lubrication passages, and so on. I learned a lot.