jobu37

Smaller. It is an A segment car. It is on the same platform as the Ford Ka.

Do you keep up with the industry news at all? Ford currently has the freshest lineup in the industry. Their planned refresh schedule moving forward is now amongst the shortest in the industry after Honda's recent announcement that they are going to increase the amount of time between updates. Additionally, Edmunds calculation of September incentive spending puts Ford under $3,000 per unit which is the lowest they have been in well over a year, maybe two years. They essentially make an additional $800.00 per unit more than either Chrysler or GM when compared to MSRP. Ford's incentives continue to drop from month to month and it appears that Nissan is on pace to pass them in incentive spending in the next couple of months. You might want to compare the incentive spending on the Focus to vehicles in it's segment to understand why Ford is being forced to put incentives on it. Additionally, I suggest you go test drive a Corolla, Civic and Focus back to back and then tell me how it is woefully out of date compared to the primary competition. Neither of those two vehicles offer anything that surpasses the Focus except the price that some loyalists are willing to pay due to their inability to test drive a Focus. As for the Escape, it is not anywhere near being the most ancient model in the segment it competes in. That dubious title belongs to the Honda CRV in the small CUV segment. The CRV has the worst fuel mileage in the segment, the worst interior noise levels in the segment , and arguably the worst styling in the segment. Yet it reigns supreme in the segment. Explain that one to me. September was a supply issue for the Escape. After selling nearly 50K in two months and the inability for Ford to get extra work days out of the KC plant at the end of August there just wasn't any product on the lots and at least here locally their still isn't any meaningful Escape inventory.

This is great news for the overall NA market. More excess capacity removed from the market. Albeit a small amount. However, if Mitsubishi and Suzuki both acknowledges and reacts to the lack of demand for their product lines maybe we will start to get a bit closer to equilibrium in the NA market. Of course Chrysler could the save the industry a lot of heartache if they would just kill off the 85% of their lineup that has no demand without excessive incentives. And also drives down transaction prices for the other domestics.

The city of Fremont and the state of California don't have enough money to pay their utility bills at this point so dishing out more to a plant that no one wants to be in is probably out of the question. Toyota and whoever the other half might be would probably ask for a kings ransom to stay to make sure that they could leave that money-losing plant for good.

This must be their first entrant in the commercial market, or at least a concept of that entrant that they announced about 8 months ago. They are jumping head first into the commercial market to try and fill up some of the unused capacity at the plant that currently builds the Titan. They currently have about 12.5 months worth of unused capacity that they need to fill. With all the various entry points into the back a mild side impact would probably total this vehicle. You would never get all those doors to realign. I'm sure only a portion of what they have on display will make it to final production.

I think Whitacre may be out of touch with what got GM into the mess they are in today. Going around buying marketshare is not going improve GM's results. It hasn't worked for them in the past, obviously and it certainly hasn't worked for the king of that approach, Chrysler. Looks like the government tried to get a "non-car guy" in Whitacre to run GM's board. Little did they know that their choice turned out to be a non car guy that thinks like a "car guy" of the past. The current approach being used by Kia and Hyundai reeks of the old GM way as well. Maybe it will come back to bite them in the arse too.

The amount of money that Ford has theoretically "already" spent to retool Michigan Truck for Focus production can potentially be pulled out of the goverment loan to do with what they want. Like pay down current debt at 35 cents on the dollar.

Quarter 2 proved that Ford had their expenses in line and Q3 will show what happens when you combine expense containment with top line growth. Ford may not make money in Q3 but they will certainly improve on the $400+ million loss from operations in the 2nd quarter. Of course, Kiley uses the NA loss (-600 mil) when talking about Ford. Vehicle production is what drives revenue and in NA, at least, they are going to be up 15% or 25% depending on whether you compare to prior quarter or prior year quarter. The only potential weakness will be South America. It is cooling off, finally. Ford may not break even in SA in Q3 or the rest of the year. However, Asia should be much stronger financially since the Fiesta supply channel will have been filled for the entire quarter. Another potential downside is the fact that there is not alot of available product on the lots. The Cash for Clunkers program has nearly completely depleted the Escape and Focus inventories at all the dealers that I have access to. The F-150 was down to only 6 units at the largest dealer here as opposed to a normal inventory of 25+. Fusion is down to nothing as it has been for months. So Ford is churning revenue currently producing vehicles to build these inventories back up but sales in August may be negatively impacted due to the shortages if not already impacted in July. I realize hindsight is 20/20 but if Ford had been able to somehow bring out the Fiesta or the new Focus prior to the Cash for Clunkers program the impact on marketshare would have been epic. Just dreaming a bit on that one.

April, May and June of 2008 were the high water marks for the Focus. Sales started falling off in July and continued to do so as gas prices fell to the point we are at now. This drop in C segment vehicles is across the industry. Civic and Corolla sales have fallen as much if not more than the Focus. In July 2008 the sales numbers were 15K. So the dropoff should be less noticeable. The Cash for Clunkers program should rev up Focus sales a bit for the next few months as well.

I have a feeling that Avalon customers won't buy something as plebeian as a Camry. Don't underestimate the blind loyalty of the Avalon owners. They have stuck with that car through the numerous transmission issues and I don't see why they would stop doing so just because Toyota starts calling the Avalon what it is has been all along. A stretched Camry with a hideous out of proportioned trunk.

Your observations make me want to share a recent after hours visit to the local Ford dealer here in NW Georgia. Let me just say that if you are a lonely person and you want to interact with the general public all you need to do is go visit the local Ford lot after they are closed. I went down to specifically see how much inventory they had on hand and take a look at the new Fusions. It was like a company picnic since there were so many people there looking at the product. There had to be close 20 people walking around. Keep in mind this is not some mega-dealer in an overly large town. I recently moved here from Texas and I used to go visit the Ford dealer back there after hours to get a bit of alone time but I now know I am going have to go somewhere else to go if I want to be alone. The lot only had 1 Fusion in stock compared to a normal stock of about 10. It looked about 50% full compared to normal. I doubt Ford will be able to post good numbers on the Fusion front since it doesn't appear that they have enough product to keep up with demand. Much better than having more product than you need, I guess. Things are definitely looking up for Ford.

The May sales rate of the Fusion/Milan/MKZ puts them at 308K on an annual basis. Which is real close to capacity when you consider that about 12K are exported to South America each year. I imagine there is still considerable 2009 units in this months numbers but in spite of that it is apparent that later in the year when the market heats up the triplets will experience demand that outstrips supply. Has anyone heard anything about a line producing Fusions at Louisville or Flat Rock?

They state that the the Camry Hybrid gets close to 40 mpg. So by that logic I guess the Fusion Hybrid gets close to 45 mpg.

Isn't the Sebring starting to gain momentum? :hyper:

1st question Because that competitive price that you are referencing is usually alot closer to the actual selling price for Honda while Ford's transaction price on the Focus is at least $2,000.00 below where the Honda transaction takes place. So Ford has had to sell their cars that cost them more to build for less money. Fortunately, with the latest iteration of the Focus this gap has closed a bit and will close more with the next Focus since the labor agreement in place for that will put Ford on more level footing on the cost side and one would expect that Ford will be able to exert more pricing power on the retail side with the more desirable attributes of the future Focus. 2nd question How many of those transplants are moving into Michigan? Ford moved production out of the U.S. under the old labor agreement. On future product plans it is very likely that the U.S. plants will be more competitive with Mexico and you can very well anticipate to see U.S. plants win more future production. Louisville for instance is just waiting to find what C platform vehicle it will be getting in the future. Perhaps you would have preferred it if Ford would have built the Fusion in the U.S four years ago which would have allowed them to make maybe a third (if that much) as much profit on each unit sold under the ridiculous labor agreements that were still in place at that time. Maybe if you had had your desire we could see Ford in the same predicament that GM and Chrysler are currently in. I'm one that is all about buying American made products and make quite the effort to do so every chance I get. But if labor is going to price themselves out of the running for new product I can certainly understand why a corporation such as Ford has no choice but to move to a more economically feasible production site. At least it wasn't across the globe. A healthy Mexico leads to more U.S. exports while a healthy Asia provides less benefit to U.S. exports since we only have one-way free trade with most Asian countries. And that one-way is not in our favor. If the current Fusion continues to demonstrate strength it is possible that Louisville may get a shift of Fusion production to go along with whatever C-car version they land. Or if the Mustang doesn't use up all the non-Mazda6 capacity at Flat Rock it may be possible that they get a shift of Fusion production. The difference now as opposed to four years ago is that both these plants are in the running whereas there was no economic reason to consider them four years ago.

I know one of the reasons that Ford has cited that they are not moving quickly on putting diesel engines in NA cars was the fact that the premium one had to pay for diesel fuel negated the savings that one would get in better mpgs. That argument doesn't hold water in the current economic climate. See the national averages below as of last week from the EIA website. All conventional gasoline $1.99/gal. On the road diesel avg. $2.04/gal. Last year that spread was 40 cents a gallon or higher for most of the year. However, all manufacturers are anticipating fuel prices to spike again and since historically the first sign of an economic recovery is always increased truckload freight tonnage the price of diesel will most definitely increase at a faster rate and sooner than gas due to increased OTR and rail shipments. Sure a diesel car would be an economical buy today but that may not be true three months from now.

I just had a Caliber for a week in Athens, GA. The craptastic plastic was even worse than I had imagined it would be from reading about the Chrysler interiors here on BON and elsewhere. When I got the car there was a little note on the key chain that said "engine light". Sure enough the second day I had it the engine light came on and never went off for the rest of my stay. The driver's manual said if it is constantly on it is a minor problem but if it starts blinking the problem is major. Fortunately it never blinked. The car had 8,500 miles on the odometer. The switchgear had no sense of quality. Everytime I turned the HVAC switch it felt like the string connecting the switch to the vents was about to snap. You actually had to strain to turn on the defroster since you could feel that your were manually opening the vent. The CVT may take time getting used to but I could not in a week's worth of driving. You punch the gas to merge onto the highway and the car just bogs down. The interior noise level has to be worst in class. One saving grace was the fact that the Caliber has a bit more ground clearance than most competing models. So I was actually able to weave through traffic that was stranded in 7 inches of snow last Sunday. The FWD came in handy as I watched Nissan Xterras and many Grand Cherokees sliding sideways down the streets once the snowpack started to freeze. However, that means this one qaulity would come in handy about once in every twenty years in Georgia. Other FWD cars had no problems either and they probably were more pleasureable to drive than mine. I rented a Focus about a year ago and the level of refinement of that car compared to the Caliber would be like comparing a Mercedes to a Yugo. The only buyers who would opt for a Caliber over just about anything else in the segment would have to be those that just have to have a hatchback and those would could not get financed by anyone else. The latter part of the last sentence describes 90% of Chrysler's customer base I would suspect.

He marveled at the Camry's quiet interior and the seemless shift from gas to electric propulsion. Two qualities that the Fusion were rated higher on in the Car and Driver comparison. So obviously he hasnt' driven the Fusion and since many other journalists have he is bitter about being left out.

With employee pricing plus up to $6,000.00 rebates along with 0% financing it does appear that it has begun. The question is how long will the government continue to finance the sale of product that obviously the market has no interest in. When by doing so you are hurting companies that do have viable futures. Were this fire sale taking place to get rid of the existing inventory and one could see the end of the downward pressure that Chrysler puts on all transactions of the domestics this would be tolerable in the short term. However, this is taking place so they can build more unwanted product that will drive prices down for the never ending future. Were the Fiat arrangement to happen, how long would the U.S. government be willing to finance Chrysler until the Fiat models start showing up on Chrysler lots? In the projected 18 months until the Fiat models hit the market how many billions of dollars would the government pay? By supporting Chrysler's existence it seems to me that the government is either sealing the fate for GM or just upping the dollar amount that it will take to keep GM alive. And at the same time you are assuring the fact that Ford will need government funding since keeping Chrysler afloat will cause Ford and GM to make less money on every car sold because they will be competing against a brand that in many cases will be selling comparable product way below cost. Keeping Chrysler alive adds to the total cost of the auto-bailout. Is it worth it? In spite of what many people have said I don't see Fiat as some sort of small car wizard that has the most advanced technology in the world. Any company that competes in Europe would appear to be a small car expert coma They are in essence a European version of Chrysler. They exist today because of one homerun in the 500 to go along with a bunch of other mediocre models. Just like Chrysler to a certain extent is still here due to the early years success of the 300 and the U.S. consumers willingness to pay current day prices for 1970's era technology in much of the Jeep lineup. Chrysler got bailed out years ago by the government and Fiat extorted a bailout to the tune of $2 billion a couple of years ago from GM. Fiat has run through that cash and an additional $5 billion in additional debt that they have taken on this year alone and they are sitting in just about the same situation that Chrysler is. Two unnecessary companies in a global auto market that needs to cut capacity yesterday. I have no doubt that the Italian govt will make sure Fiat doesn't fail even if it means getting in bed with the French govt. and Puegoet because that's what socialist regimes do. However, we are suppose to be a free market over here and the market has spoken and it doesn't care for Chrysler so maybe the government should listen to the market and let this company die.

He does have a point with the fact that Chevy was in essence rebating a brand new truck to the same levels as two trucks at the end of their product cycle. But then again GM wasn't just rebating their trucks to kill the Tundra they were also doing it to help hold on the the best selling global manufacturer claim. If I'm not mistaken here it is a year later and I believe that GM has officially lost that title. Someone correct me if I am wrong. I wonder if their newfound 2nd ranking or maybe with the government involved GM will back off on the ego plays that they have made for so many years related to marketshare. Surely with the killing and reduction in offerings in their various brands they expect to drop a little marketshare. Just as Ford appears to have two homeruns to various degrees with the Fusion and Taurus this year. It seems likely that the marketshare spread between GM and Ford should shrink at some point in 2009. However, considering that this article is one year old it appears that Mr. Funo wasn't necessarily right on his predictions. The fact is that Ford, in spite of overbuilding the 2008 models prior to the credit meltdown, has had to add an additional shift to supply the all new F-150. I wonder if Mr. Funo is still with Toyota. This kind of outburst had to of been looked at in a negative light by the higher ups at Toyota. The lack of demand for the Tundra should be the least of Toyota's concerns at this point in time. The uncharacteristic approval of both the Fusion and Taurus by the media doesn't bode too well for their bread and butter Camry in the near future. I certainly don't expect Ford to outsell the Camry even if you add the sales of both Ford's offerings together but I do anticipate some erosion of the Camry's segment leadership. How will Toyota spin the loss of sales to Ford? Maybe by stating the following "We don't think it is fair the way Ford went out and built two vehicles better than the Camry. Why can't they just build one better? What is even more disappointing to us at Toyota is the fact that both the media and buying public took notice of these better offerings. We really thought we had them brainwashed better than that"

I hope you're right but that is game changing jump in demand you are predicting considering the segment the Taurus is in has been dropping like a rock for the past few years. I guess it will have alot to do with how the car is perceived by the public. As just another land yacht or will they see it for what it is. A luxury appointed vehicle priced like a non-luxury vehicle. IIRC, Toyota is essentially pulling out of the full-size segment to a degree by axing the Avalon name and replacing it with Camry EL or something to that effect. That might work to Ford's favor by making it easier for the public to compare a Taurus to a Camry which is really no comparison once the new Taurus arrives. The final EPA ratings will have alot to do with that being a valid comparison since I would imagine at least half if not more of it's sales are of the 4-cylinder variety. Does anybody have insight on what the expected EPA rating is going to be on the Taurus? They said best in class in the press release so does that mean 30 mpg Hwy or better? As for Chicago, they have a long way to go before they need that second shift back and even if Taurus does move 150K in 2010 Chicago in theory will still have enough excess capacity for the upcoming FWD/AWD Explorer on a third shift. Unless the Explorer becomes a game changer too. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for 250K Taurses a year. Being forced to find another plant for Explorer production would be a nice position for Ford to be in for a change.

Perhaps we are at the beginning of tectonic shift in the bias that has existed amongst the automotive journalists for the last decade. First Dan Neil of the LA Times gushes over the Fusion Hybrid by bragging about beating the EPA estimate by 11 mpg and now a fact-driven review of the Taurus. What's next? Will a journalist actually put his job on the line by acknowledging the fact that the Focus is more than competitive with both the Corolla and Civic? Not everyone has gotten on board of course. Inside Line recently claimed that they were able to get better MPGs out of a Camry Hybrid than a Fusion Hybrid. Only at the end of their review do they acknowledge that the Camry was tested on a clear sunny day while the Fusion was tested on a rainy day with high winds. Using their keen insight into the various scientific variables that may have altered the performance of the two vehicles they determine it resulted in a only 2 or 3 mpg difference which still made the Camry look better. Even my neighbor Ed has changed his tune. Instead of writing in chalk on his driveway "Ford Sucks" as he has for the past three years he recently started writing "Ford isn't that good". Reviews like this one may actually start getting people into the showrooms and that is the only thing holding Ford back. Because once they are there the product will sell itself.

They beat them both ways. Ford Group 1,461,235 -5.2% GM Group 1,406,916 -13.9% Brandwise Ford 1,224,750 -4.1% Opel/Vauxhall 1,155,422 -14%

I wonder if GM had some new models come out in December or did they make a marketshare move via fire-sale tactics. The reason that I ask is because they have been bleeding mareket share all year and especially for the prior 3 months then all of the sudden they outsell Ford in December. It would be totally unlike GM to do something like that. The real positive news this month and all year is that Toyota is quickly become an also-ran in the European market as is Honda. Mazda had been running neck and neck with Honda through November then Honda pulled away in December.

This should come as a surprise to no one that pays attention to the happenings in the auto industry. Nissan has been discounting very agressively to hold on to marketshare that their craptastic lineup doesn't deserve. Other than the Altima they really aren't competitive in any class. And with the arrival of the new Fusion they will fall another notch in the mid-size category. The fire-sale of all things truck-like in October probably contributed a good bit to these bad results. If you recall, while every other manufacturers' trucks and SUVs were down double digit % Nissan pulled 10-15% gains on everything except Titan. It appears no amount of money could bring that deadweight up. They were gaining marketshare in Europe through November at the expense of Honda and Toyota but even that came to an end in December. I expect agressive discounting over there as well. Maybe the GT-R and 370Z will improve their fortunes, not. While styling is subjective, I think he new Maxima has to be one of worse front clip designs to ever come out of a design studio. Sans the Tribeca, of course. I think Carlos Goshn started believing too much of what he read in the comic books that make him out to be some sort of a god.