Park behind the rose garden wall at the Main House this season and you will find a 32-foot truck wrapped in custom livery, doing more cooking than the two full kitchens it was brought in to cover for. That is not a modest claim. According to Executive Chef Luis Young, the mobile kitchen the club calls Tin Lizzie actually out-produces both the Clubhouse restaurant and the Lake Dye Grill in raw cooking capacity. A stopgap was supposed to hold the line during construction. Instead it became the thing members are talking about.
The name is not an accident. When Henry Ford's Model T rolled off the line in 1908, Americans nicknamed it Tin Lizzie, pairing the tin of its lightweight body with Lizzie, old slang for the horse it was replacing. The Ford's version carries the same joke forward: a 32-foot mobile kitchen standing in for horsepower it does not literally have, while quietly outperforming what came before it. The club leaned into the reference on purpose, treating the truck as a small tribute to the man whose winter estate the community still sits on.
A Renovation That Started With the Sports Barn
Tin Lizzie exists because The Ford is in the middle of a $24.5 million amenity transformation, its largest capital project since Pete Dye's course went in during the 1980s for a reported $11 million. That earlier number is worth sitting with for a second. The club is now spending more than double what it cost to build the golf course in the first place, this time on a new golf practice facility and expanded social spaces, according to the community's own materials shared through Visit Savannah.
Work is beginning with the Sports Barn, and the club has been direct about why the truck came first. The stated goal was to keep dining running through the renovation without asking members to simply wait it out. What actually happened is that the workaround turned out to be more capable than the fixed kitchens it was covering for, which says something about how the project was planned. Nobody budgets a food truck expecting it to outclass a clubhouse restaurant. That it does anyway is the detail that makes this more than routine construction news.
Where the Truck Actually Shows Up
Tin Lizzie is not staying parked at the Main House. The club has described it as a roving culinary hub, with pop-up service planned across the property:
- Everyday dining behind the rose garden wall at the Main House
- Pop-ups at Lake Dye
- Service at the Marina
- Appearances at the Oyster House
The recurring formats members can expect include Taco Tuesdays, Fish Fry Fridays, and burgers and brats served waterside, each tied to whichever setting the truck rolls into that week, from riverside views to the shade of the property's older oaks. It is a different kind of dining calendar than a single clubhouse menu, and it means the renovation period is producing more variety in where and how members eat, not less.
The truck has a second job that points outward rather than in. The club has used Tin Lizzie at charitable events and regional real estate showcases in both Richmond Hill and Savannah, extending the community's hospitality past its own gates. For members, that means the branding they see at Lake Dye on a Tuesday might show up at a Richmond Hill charity event the following weekend, carrying the same kitchen and the same team.
A Reciprocal Card That Didn't Require Building Anything
The same instinct, get more without constructing more, shows up in a second move the club made this year. Since January 2026, Ford members have had reciprocal access to Club Bardo, a private social club inside Hotel Bardo Savannah on Forsyth Park. Hotel Bardo is not a modest pairing. Travel and Leisure and Conde Nast Traveler both named it among the best hotels in the world in 2024, and the property sits on two acres at the edge of one of Savannah's most recognizable green spaces.
Where the amenity transformation adds square footage on site, the Bardo partnership adds an entire address in downtown Savannah without a single new stud going up at The Ford. Members get an urban social club roughly half an hour north of the gates, and the club gets to expand what membership means without expanding what it has to maintain.
The Tournament That Stays Closed Even While It Grows
Not every investment this year has been about opening things up. In April, the club hosted its third annual Ford Collegiate Golf Tournament, and the field said something about how the course itself is regarded outside the gates. Hosted by Georgia Southern, the 2026 tournament drew three of the country's top five programs at the time, No. 1 Auburn, No. 4 LSU, and No. 5 Texas, alongside the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech, for a field of 12 teams total, according to WSAV's coverage.
"There's a lot riding on the line," the club's director of golf, Pete Vitiello, told WSAV ahead of the tournament, adding that he expected a special week on Pete Dye's back nine. What the tournament does not offer is public spectating. It remains open only to the golfers' own families, which is consistent with how the club treats its course generally: no tee times for members, no public access for anyone else. The tournament is proof the course keeps earning attention from serious college programs while the community around it stays exactly as private as it has always been.
One Night the Gates Opened the Other Way
The clearest exception to that privacy came in the spring of 2025, when the Richmond Hill Historical Society and Museum held its Centennial Celebration Soiree inside the Main House, the same building that once served as Henry and Clara Ford's winter retreat. The evening marked one hundred years since the Fords' first visit to coastal Georgia in April of 1925, a trip that started as a search for a winter home and ended up reshaping the town that still carries the family's name.
For one night, a piece of the property's history became a shared civic occasion rather than a private one, hosted for the historical society rather than for members alone. It is a small gesture next to a $24.5 million capital project, but it fits the same pattern showing up everywhere else this year. The club is being more precise about which parts of itself open outward and which stay closed, rather than treating the gate as a single switch.
What the Season Adds Up To
None of these four moves happened in isolation, and none of them reads the same way alone as it does next to the others. A mobile kitchen that outperforms the buildings it is covering for. A reciprocal club membership that adds a downtown Savannah address without new construction. A golf tournament that keeps recruiting elite programs while staying closed to the public. A historical society gala that opens the Main House for exactly one night a year. Put together, they describe a club spending real money to get more out of what it already has, rather than assuming more square footage is the only way to grow.
If you already call The Ford home and you have wondered lately what your property is worth against a season like this one, Oliver Group tracks how amenity investment and reciprocal access translate into value for coastal Georgia's private communities. Get a Home Valuation whenever you are ready to see where your home stands.
