In an effort to reduce vehicle weight, the automotive industry has switched to aluminum sheet for many closure panels. While aluminum is consistent with existing manufacturing processes and has attractive qualities such as low density, good mechanical properties and high corrosion resistance, it has less room-temperature formability than steel. The expanded forming limits that are possible with superplastic forming can significantly improve the ability to form complex shapes from materials with limited formability. Superplastic forming has been applied at Ford Motor Company for the fabrication of aluminum closure panels for over a decade. However, applications have been limited to low-volume, specialty-vehicles due to the relatively slow cycle time and cost penalty associated with the specially-processed sheet alloys. While there is substantial literature on the superplastic characteristics of aluminum alloys, the bulk of this work has focused on the development of aerospace alloys which are often too costly and perhaps inappropriate for automotive applications. Additionally, there has been a limited amount of work done on developing the technologies required to support the higher production volumes of the automotive industry. This paper presents an automotive perspective on superplastic forming and an overview of the research being performed at Ford Motor Company to increase the production volume in which superplastic forming can be cost competitive with traditional forming technologies. Research and development efforts are underway to both reduce the cost penalty of materials that are specially-processed to be suitable for superplastic forming as well as a variety of modifications to the manufacturing process to decrease both the forming time as well as the overall process cycle time.