jpd80

You know, I have a theory about selling well equipped vehicles from get go. If buyers are "educated" in what they're actually buying the whole process is much smoother.

I can just see Blackhorse puffing out his chest, you're on the Christmas card list.

I just looked tail on at a new Mondeo parked beside an early 1990s Falcon (looks like Taurus from then) The Mondeo looked friggin' huge next to the falcon, I can't believe how big cars are today - and the weight.

If Ford had seen any possible market for a Miata sized sports car, wouldn't they have built one? I'd say the expenditure on capital and resources far outweighed any profit from sales. (Since there was no car, there probably was no sound business case.)

Why Deanh, you must feel so dirty selling all those high series models.....

No doubt, some goose will complain about the engine's size and how wedge heads take up less room...

Funny that we still argue whether the Mustang should be smaller or not when it has lasted 45 years......

They may still offer strippers but as you say, the demand is for better equipped vehicles. At some time you may find strippers become special order, like base model Falcons have become.

I disagree, Ford is done with chasing the lower end of the market. Ford seems to be cutting out "stripper" models and selling more well appointed vehicles. Ford's new philosophy is about reaping a higher profit per vehicle across the board, maybe that's why Ranger and Panther platforms are going away.

There's evidence flowing through that globally, Ford vehicles are moving up a level and buyers are wanting more mid and upper series vehicles. If that trend continues, Ford will start making healthy profits even with reduced/depressed production output. Good things happen when you build quality products that buyers want.

If ever Falcon comes to North America it will come as a niche luxury performance vehicle and at a premium price. Roughly 50% of those Commodore sales are base models to fleets. When you look at Falcon and Commodore sales in that light, the Falcon is way ahead. Holden went to the 3.0 SIDI V6 in its base Omega Commodore to get a low CO2 figure and bragging rights on fuel economy but in a recent motoring test the 4.0 liter 6-speed auto Falcon actually beat it.

The problem has nothing to do with peak oil, it has to do with refining capacity and supply. In the boom before the GFC, excess production was bought up by China building up its stockpiles and maintaining supply to its own growing infrastructure. All that needs to happen is enough recovery to allow China to resume its internal development and all that excess diesel and gasoline will disappear driving up the price again. The Chinese will pretty much pay whatever they have to but lifestyle based USA will be stuck with $6/gal gas and diesel when refueling their gas guzzling F Trucks and SUVs.

LINK Gee, factory order books are full through January, chock full of mid an upper series cars.

Well, at least the long term STAP workers seem to have gained a reasonable retirement incentive. That's a better outcome than walking away with nothing like GM NUMMI workers.

Actually, the IRs was not Control Blade at all. MKR was closer to a DEW platform than Mustang, double A-Arm front suspension and multi link IRS. MKR was a cobbling together of unrelated parts into a car that has Falcon proportions. An exercise in how to build a RWD Lincoln and avoid the obvious platform..........

So what's the point of the S, couldn't Ford just drop it and start at SE?

I'm thinking cars like Falcon, our base model Falcons get a lot of stuff standard but in the G Series: you get dual climate control and a premium sound package, rear park sensors. FoA have moved their Value packs (like SR) from base to mid range models in essence, making a quasi high series vehicle available at an affordable price for most buyers. I've heard similar thing are going on in Europe and perhaps this is changing the buyers' perception of Ford as being more premium products than low cost entry level vehicles.

Yet GM and Ford both have good working relationships with their Chinese manufacturing partners. The fact that Ford is continuing talks with Geely means that the IP concerns are able to be solved and I suspect the sale will wrapped by the middle of 2010.

And this is a area not apparent when people just read monthly sales figures. At the moment Ford's product mix globally is fascinating, the numbers aren't changing much but it seems like private buyers are preferring mid and upper series vehicles over base models.

Yeah, $458 million but last year was exceptional to say the least. Volvo will get better but not enough to avoid the sale. I see Geely is interested in producing even bigger Volvos as well, could that be a Taurus variant? Maybe that's some of the intellectual property Ford wants to preserve.....

No, they had a $135 million loss

That idea is nonsense, just look at what GM and Holden did with the Zeta, a clean sheet design. Their Commodore/G8 Sedan weighs the same as a Falcon but the Camaro is about 400 lb heavier than the equivalent Mustang. That is why you don't use the one platform for a sedan and a coupe. Ford has found it more economic to improve costs at the supplier level rather than producing one rather constrained platform that suits neither car. E8 Falcon is remaining until 2015, I suspect D2C will change a year or so before that. Development work on a proposed Falcon platform beyond 2015 will be starting soon but the decision on it does not have to be made until sometime in 2011, plenty of time yet.

This thread is already in Automotive Open Topic Discussions LINK

As oil gets more expensive, previously non-profitable fields below the ocean floor become viable. I think big oil will play this one all the way out......

Don't be too hard on yourself, I feel that you're looking in the right directions and I'm sure that Ford will try to reuse as much engineering as possible and get the most bang for bucks. They probably looked at T6 and worked out there's too many changes for NA but maybe they decided they could fill the Ranger gap better by redoing one or a mixture of existing products