News flash: small cars like the Ford Focus are selling beyond expectations (ours anyway) while trucks and SUVs are sitting on dealer lots much longer than auto manufacturers would like. For this reason, Ford is moving as quickly as possible to switch a few of its truck plants into car plants, including its Michigan Truck plant where behemoth SUVs like the Expedition and Navigator were being built. The switchover is going to cost the automaker since these are not flexible manufacturing facilities, with the first bit of retooling ringing the registers to the tune of $75 million bucks -- and that's just for a new bodyshop. The total cost to retool the plant will be in the hundreds of millions. As they say, it takes money to make money. While the plant is being refurbished, workers will be shuffled to the nearby Wayne plant to build even more Focuses. The best bit of news, though, is that Ford will finally be building its small cars from Europe at its converted truck plant, the ones we've all been asking for since the Euro-Focus got a new platform and we didn't. Not that we're still sour or anything...
Mercury has been languishing over the last several years with badged-engineered products barely distinguishable from their Ford brethren. As the market shifts towards smaller cars with higher fuel efficiency, there may be a golden opportunity for the Mercury brand to actually prove its worth as Ford's outlet for European-designed vehicles for the American market. In a move akin to what General Motors has done with Saturn, importing Opels to the U.S. in an attempt to revive the marque, Ford could bring its highly-desirable Euro-only models to the States badged as Mercurys.
According to unnamed sources, the New York Times is suggesting that Ford will begin manufacturing six Euro-spec models right here in America at plants formerly used to produce F-Series trucks, SUVs and vans. We'll have to wait until this Thursday before any official announcements are made by the Blue Oval, but that gives us some time to speculate on which Kinetic-infused products are on their way. That's what the comments are for -- have at.
If Willy Wonka made cars, this is what it would look like. The cold, hard reality is that automobiles are ground out like sausages in huge factories that ingest raw materials at one end and spit out shiny metal boxes filled with ticky-tacky at the other end. Marketing's a funny thing, though; building an emotional connection to your product can often lead to sales gold, so Ford's slathering its Fiesta marketing effort in pheromones to make it irresistible to buyers. It's all very trippy and fun, full of primary colors and smiling faces, but the thing is, we already love the Fiesta. They could put Orson Welles out there at his most cantankerous, and that'd be fine. We do dig the creativity, and since it's an entry level car, maybe the target market will be entirely comfortable with the campaign, having just recently graduated from Sesame Street, anyway.
There has been plenty of support for Ford to bring its rest-of-the-world products to the North American market, and with the truck market doing a Roscoe P. Coltrane E-brake turn away from profitability, the Blue Oval's global efforts are becoming increasingly important for its survival. The plan going forward is to utilize small and medium sized vehicles from Ford's European arsenal globally. In North America, the cars will be spiffy, though Ford will be robbing Peter to pay Paul on that count -- spreading the costs of America's premium cars over the breadth of the entire program's worldwide scope.
According to Automotive News, we're getting a big list of Euro-Ford based cars in the near future. The Fiesta will slot in under the Focus, and will share a new platform with Mazda. Also on the Fiesta's underpinnings could be a small crossover or minivan. The Euro Focus will finally get here in 2011, when the next generation drops. 2012 will bring the C-Max, a Mazda 5-ish people mover. The Fusion moves to the EUCD platform, though we hope it doesn't grow too much, lose its joyous demeanor, or come up short on fuel economy. It looks like Ford's going to try to stack the B, C, and D segments with sedans and MPV-type offerings, as well as seriously tweaking all of its offerings to match the new and looming reality.
Henry Ford would be proud of Ford Europe's latest special edition. Offered only in black – inside and out – the "Black Magic" edition is based on the new Focus Coupe-Cabriolet launched in this year Geneva. The package includes black powder-coated 17-inch alloys mounted to a sport suspension, plus tinted headlights and fog lamps. The interior is swathed in (you guessed it) black leather, complimented by special floor mats and bundled with an MP3- and Bluetooth-compatible stereo, parking sensors and wind deflector. Only 1500 copies of the Black Magic edition will be made available in Europe with a choice of 2-liter engines running on gasoline (145hp) or diesel (136hp) for Є28,100 or Є30,100 respectively.
At the Automotive News World Congress in Detroit, Ford CEO Alan Mulally revealed that the automaker would be introducing a new Taurus sedan next year to replace the one that has failed to meet sales expectations despite a number of substantial improvements and a new name. Mulally said in his speech, "The new Taurus is the one we should have made originally." He clearly concedes that the current Taurus is not what the market wants, but as to what Ford should have made originally, we can't say with confidence what he's referring to. The current Taurus is a supremely competent sedan wrapped in a supremely ho-hum package, so we expect next year's Ford Taurus to be more stylish inside and out, as well as be made available with a range of turbocharged, direct-inject EcoBoost engines to augment the currently available 3.5L V6.
Mulally also reiterated in his speech Ford's intent to commonize platforms and models that are sold across the pond from one another. He even specifically mentioned the Ford Focus, saying it would eventually be the same as the European Focus. We've been wanting a hard date for when this will happen, as enthusiasts in the U.S. have been wailing with fists for the Euro version of the Focus to be sold in the U.S. since it debuted. While a firm time-table still eludes us, at least we have confirmation that one day our Focus will be as cool as theirs.
