silvrsvt

The upcoming EPA MPG regs in 2020

Well the economy looks like its going to slide a bit more in 08...there was a higher jobless report for this past month and the whole mortgage mess is still shaking out here.

Toyota might be able to dump its Trucks on the market, how is that a viable business plan? Esp if they have 150K units of extra build capacity? An extra 100K of sales spilt from GM, Ford and Dodge isn't all that much w numbers that there pickups sell

Like I said...this list is convoluted...It seems like its based on resale values and rebates

They both suck! :P Ok the Mini sux a little less

Feels like Wedensday since most people had off new years eve and day :P

Holy Giant Lincoln grill on that bad boy!

So its ok for a Jeep to have a cheap looking dash in it vs a Mustang having a cheap looking one? I don't get your logic... There is nothing wrong with the current Mustang design outside of the materials and center stack, which part of Ford's part sharing with other cars...every other car besides the 08 Escape and Focus have the brick radio in it.

But how long have high mileage/low mantance engines been around? 10-15 years? Simple fix is to just replace your plugs every 30-40K or just break them lose and retighen them down. If you leave a screw or bolt in the same conditions it will come out (and be a bitch about it), but a sparkplug sure doesnt have the same strength as as either and will break if you apply the same forces to it.

Um It only gets like 18-24 with AWD I'm almost willing to say that getting nearly 27-30MPG out of a V6 in a mid-sized car with the new EPA regs is nearly impossible. Ok the Camry Sedan gets 28 MPG highway, just making it...

understandable, but also hasn't the market moved away from the model of selling high volume products, just because there are more players on the market now eating from the same pie? I can only think of 4 cars (not including trucks) that I would consider High Volume products in the US: Accord/Camry/Civic and Collora. Most everything else sells under 175K units a year. So in other words, for the past 20 years or so, The F-series, The Taurus from 1986 to 1996 and the Explorer from 1992 till 2002 where Ford's only sources of income?

The real question of the hour is when Ford is profitible, are we going to get a bunch of bandwagoners here instead of all the negatards we have now?

Doesn't mean anything when it comes to F-150 vs Tundra sales, Tundra rebates are still in the 6K range and the F-150 is only at $3500. Also lets not forget that that the F-150 is now the oldest fullsized pick up on the market with a refresh due this year. Do you really think they will be able to sustain those sales levels with 6K rebates on them for a length of time? all they are doing is pulling sales and dropping the resale value of their product. So they are going to fix the flexible flyer frame or the tail gate that gets damaged when it has more then 200lbs on it?

I have to agree with you, GM tried too hard in copying the 60's Camaro interior design...somethings are better left in the past, esp when it comes to interior design from that time period. The Mustang might be "boring" but it has some of the design features of the earlier mustang, but not at the expense of modern ergonomic design.

The F-150 is the best selling nameplate in the US/World....

The thing is that NADA pricing is off the mark also

Aren't you contaditcting yourself to an extent here? For example, when the 1996 Taurus came out, Ford had expecatations of selling it at say 400K units a year. I'm not sure what the fleet sale break down was for the time, but it seemed like they pushed the car heavly into fleet sales to keep it at that mark, which directly impacted its profitiblity and to the consumer, its appeal and resale. Fast Forward 10 years to the 2005 Fusion, Ford's expecations are half of that or so, yet they only sell 15-20% of them to fleet. Thats a cut back of 30-35% or better then the Taurus did with more profitible sales to retail. Further more the CD3 platform is being used in other programs with a much higher profit expecation then the Taurus alone could ever have with the Edge and MKX. It seems to me that Ford is doing the smart thing by cutting expecations of sales it had and designing its products accordingly to make those profits with smaller unit sales. Another example of this is the Mustang...2005 had its own unqine platform ever in its history and that platform only does sales in the 100K-130K range and its Profitible. I'd rather see a much smaller Ford thats profitible vs one that sells alot of cars and doesn't make much money doing it..like they've been doing for ages now.

I think their criteria for picking out vehicles is a bit convoluted, but Ford makes the list with the Explorer, F-150, Mercury Mountaineer and of all things..the Grand Marquis! http://www.forbes.com/2007/12/27/cars-over...h_0102cars.html The vast majority of the "overpriced" cars are mid-sized SUV's which have fallen out of favor with the car buying public...hmmm

Its quite oblivious that its a pre-production dash, but the overall look of it still sucks (ignoring the cheap looking plastic and out of place instrumentation) and using gold plated parts won't change it.

Um overall marketshare for Ford has been around 13% for the past couple years

Ha!! Ooops

For example what where the sales of the other cars in the same time period?

I saw in an article that Toyota passed Ford as number 2 automaker in the USA and that Tundra sales where up 57%....so what was the year end total for it? Did they break the 200K barrier?

OMG my first reaction was laughter! I think the center stack is missing a trim peice above that abortion of HVAC/Radio controls...not that its gonna help it at all