To mark 125 years in racing, Ford has traced how its motorsport operation has changed names and logos since 1901, ending with the return of Ford Racing.
How many names can one racing programme have? Ford has had quite a few. To mark 125 years in motorsport, the company has published a history of the names and logos behind its racing work.
The piece was written by Jamie Myler, a senior research archivist at Ford Motor Company. It starts in 1901, when Henry Ford won his first race in Sweepstakes. The branding has changed many times since then, but Ford argues the commitment has not.
No Single Racing Arm Before the 1980s
For most of the 20th century, Ford had no dedicated racing division. It still raced plenty. The Ford Drag Team formed in 1962, and the Total Performance programme followed in 1963.
In 1963, racing programmes also fell under the Special Vehicle Activity name. That was only an internal label, though. In fact, Ford says the GT40’s 1966 Le Mans win belonged to the company as a whole rather than to one racing department.
From SVO to Ford Racing
That changed in 1981 with Special Vehicle Operations (SVO). This in-house division managed motorsport, performance parts and high-performance road cars. It ran Ford’s factory-backed racing across several series until 1993.
During the SVO years, racing efforts carried the Ford Motorsport logo. Its design evolved, but it always placed the Blue Oval above “motorsport” in block letters.
In 1993, Ford split the operation. The road-car side became the Special Vehicles Team (SVT). The original SVO team became Ford Racing and focused only on racing and performance parts. By 2000, Ford was regularly using the Ford Racing Technology name, with the Blue Oval above the word “racing”.
The Ford Performance Era
In 2014, Ford merged three groups into a new division called Ford Performance:
- Ford Racing
- SVT
- Ford TeamRS, which ran the World Rally Championship and European performance car programmes
The wider remit covered road cars, off-roading and aftermarket parts as well as racing. The logo first put the Blue Oval above the words “Ford Performance”. It later became just those words in block letters.
Several other brands also had links to Ford’s performance and racing work over the years. These included Autolite, Motorcraft, Ford Electronics and Special Vehicle Engineering.
Back to Ford Racing
The latest change came on 4 September 2025, when Ford Performance became Ford Racing again. Ford says the aim is to remove the divide between its race teams and the engineers who develop its road and off-road vehicles.
The company says the new structure brings race car and road car development closer together than ever. Its stated goal is a direct pipeline of innovation from the track to the showroom. The logo returns to the Ford oval above “racing”, now in a single shade called Ford Racing blue.
That track-to-road promise is still Ford’s own description, and buyers will judge it by the cars. The history does show one thing clearly. After four decades of reshuffles, Ford has come back to the simple Blue Oval above “racing” that it used from the 1990s onwards.
