LarryQW

I ran my Merkur Scorpio into the ground, after 15 years and 180,000 miles. I'd buy another in a heartbeat if they just kept importing. The car was so versatile. It handled superbly like a sports car, could carry my large family, rear seats reclined, the hatch could carry big loads like a wagon. And now I got a Taurus X, and love it too. I suppose I have a thing for bastard Ford offspring....

I bought quite a few shares at $4, but bought way more when it went to $2. However, by then I was overly exposed to buy at $1 as I'd wished. Now I've made enough on Ford stock to cover the purchase of my new Ford Taurus X Limited last year. So Ford paid for my Ford. What a deal!

I started looking at Ford company before buying my Taurus X last year. The more I looked at Ford, the more I was extremely impressed at how the company was run and how much it has changed, with so little public recognition of the facts. Bill Ford wanted true change and pulled in Mullaly to help, who completely transformed the company. Ford cut their costs, people, and factories way back a few years ago, well ahead of the fall in demand, with a goal toward getting themselves profitable which they did briefly. They wisely stuffed bundles of money in their bank to survive major storms like we see today. Ford is now moving to the top in most all categories, including safety, reliability, AND gas mileage all at the same time! We're now just waiting the several year lag time now befor the public realizes and accepts Ford's major change that's already proven by independent measures (IIHS, fueleconomy.gov, Consumer Reports user surveys,...). On top of that, Ford has gone global with pulling in superb winning European small car designs with excellent fuel efficiency. They've cut design costs as a result too. In general Ford looks like a company that's very well run and poised for great growth. They're gaining market share as proof of payoff for their effort. The national economy is wrecking all companies in its path, and it may be a couple years to take its course. Car purchasing is at an extreme all time low. But cars don't last forever and getting older every year, so putting off purchases now will only increase demand later as people's cars decay under them. And Ford's attractive new features (fuel economy, style, electronics, ...) will pull in people once they start purchasing again. On the negative side, the biggest risk is that Ford could go bankrupt or be put into some situation that wipes out stock holders like me. So far, Ford looks like they'll scrape by one way or another. A major push for the Ford management to keep stockholders solvent is the Ford family themselves, who live or die by Ford's stock value. A small dilution is fine by me as long as it keeps the stock from being wiped out, so long as stockholders like me can get to Ford's bright future. I'm sure Ford stock will go up and down with various excitement over the next several months, especially with some money managers trying stock manipulation for their very short term gains. But in the longer term Ford looks to a very big winner if they get through this, which is a tough call but looks good for now, especially with the management in place that has shown themselves to be proactive. As a result of Ford's turn around, I bought a lot of Ford stock as it was falling, some at $4 and more at $2. I badly wanted to buy even more Ford stock when it went to $1, but Ford was already above 25% of my portfolio and so I held myself back. (Well, OK, with Ford's drop it's now only 15% of my portfolio, but I luckily pulled everything into cash at the market peak last year. :D ) Although many will gamble on short term games with Ford's extreme rapid volatility right now, I view Ford as a long term investment (3-4 year). The gains will occur when the economy is recovered, people must buy a new car as their old ones die out, all of Ford's new style line up is in place, the gas price is back up and Ford's major improvements on fuel economy bear fruit - especially as EcoBoost is deployed more throughout their line, Ford's dramatic quality and reliability improvements finally penetrate public perception, and their market share gains over the other car makers actually means something, including excellent profits. IMO, the only long term risk is a total wipe out of stock holders. But I view Ford as one of the least likely for that too.

I've read that going into bankruptcy will allow SiriusXM to invalidate contracts, like the one for $500 million over 5 years with Howard Stern! (I can't believe he brings in THAT much business.) I greatly enjoy the Sirius radio that came with my Taurus X. Even though I have regular radio, and SYNC, I really most like listening to Sirius. The FM seems to have a little newest stuff, and my SYNC flash drive has my older music. But Sirius has a lot of great variety, from various music genres, to comedy, sports, news, or financial news - what I listen to most. As such, 85% of the time in the car, I'm listening to Sirius. With Sirius now, I seriously no longer care about how long my morning commute takes. I only buy subscriptions two years at a time, and installed a Sirius radio for my wife for her birthday. She also now loves it. I think our subscriptions will be fine. I don't see Sirius going away with the money they're making, even with Dish eyeing the bandwidth, which isn't really that much and best left for audio, especially with a built-in paying customer base. I view the bankruptcy as a strategic issue with contracts. The threat also encourages the current holders of debt to renew when it comes due. And there's also an issue of control of the company. The current leaders know if they're taken over by Dish, they're going to be unemployed. So they don't want to sell. Any way it rolls, I suspect my satellite radio will continue to work just fine as long as I continue sending my generous bi-annual bribe they call a fee to whoever's in charge.

Oh yeah? The realtors pushed the overpriced house because of the giant bonus/commissions they were making. The mortgage brokers ignored any ability of the borrower to pay back loans because of the wonderful commssions they were making. The debt rating agencies all made great commissions by delicately ignoring the real value on the secured assets. They must of known it was doomed like any pyramid scheme, but based their ratings on 'history' - that is the pyramid scheme was still growing and working to date... Wall Street bought, sliced, diced, and resold the toxic waste loans as AAA grade because of the giant megabucks in commissions and bonuses they were making. Surely any intelligent player worthy of a commission knew the game and eventual result, but they used the IBG principle (I'll Be Gone with my M$ by the time it all comes due). If anything, the grossly excessive bonuses and overpaid commissions are probably the biggest cause of the current housing/credit/financial bubble, with the resultant collapse and depression, via encouragement of irresponsible and criminal short sited greed among all parties. And now we get to see the same greedy jerks that caused this mess grab our tax dollars by saying they're too important to fail. They say we need to give them some more bonuses. As for Mulally, he definitely works for his money and makes great decisions that may well save Ford and make the company prosper. Even still, I think he and many other executives of large companies are way overpaid and they've found ways to rationalize their salary. As much as I like Mulally, I cringed when he told Congress that he thought his salary was fine where it was. It sadly showed he was also out of touch.

Same here, except every time I bought Ford stock, it went down by half (to 4 to 2 to 1 dollar/share). I bought even more as it went down, dropping from a great deal to super bargain. I finally got smart and stopped buying Ford so it wouldn't drop any more. Anyway, it's coming back and I'm making money! I started reading about Ford as part of buying my new Taurus X. The more I learn about Mulally and what Ford's been doing, the more I'm extremely impressed with the company: business resizing to fit demand getting loans upfront for new redevelopment and survival Mulally hiring in Farley from Toyota to head marketing Cleaning up the upper management with the help of Bill Ford renewed emphasis on small cars and good gas mileage EcoBoost SYNC and other excellent electronic interfaces. greatly improved reliability - moving up with Toyota on defects, and top of Consumer Reports charts top in safety according to IIHS - 6 of 16 top rated cars were from Ford (including my Taurus X) importing great small cars designs from Europe innovative new designs across the board from Vista/Fiesta to Flex to F150 to Explorer America. This is just to mention a few of many major advances I'm seeing happening over the last couple years at Ford. It drives me nuts to see Ford lumped in with the "Detroit 3" as an example of a dead industry that needs to change. It's to Alan Mulally's credit he didn't scream back at the idiots in Congress as they were lambasting him for not changing Ford's business - exactly what he already started years ago, and more. However, Ford did finally start doing more promoting how much Ford is different to many news sources, like this linked story. Yet in spite of the major releases, still nobody seems to listen. The re-invention of Ford seems to have started first with Bill Ford a few years back, in a real attempt at change and saving the family business. But he needed someone outside to swing the hatchets and push hard to get things done. Boy did he pick the right guy with Mulally.

So happens I'm a long time Ford fan, it appears. I've purchased many Ford products for my family. I really like the Taurus/Sable Wagon for the versatility, style, and car-like driving, and have purchased two pre-owned in the last 10 years. My wife got a Freestar wagon a year old. Used Fords, only 1 or 2 years old, are great deals as their resale price plummets while the car is still great. Still, I loved the Taurus X so much I ended up buying one new, built exactly to my perfect desires. After a year I can't say enough about how great the Taurus X car fits my family and active mountain biking life. With great difficulty, I resist saying a whole lot more wonderful things now. The other 'Ford' I bought new was a Merkur Scorpio. It was a fabulous family/sports sedan with top handling. I kept it for 14 years and only sold it because I moved cross country. It seems every great Ford car I fall in love with ends up getting low sales and canned in year or two.....

Looks to be a near clone of my Taurus X from what I can tell. The front dash, vents, passenger side grab bar, are all the same. The exterior shell with the roof rising in back also looks just like a Taurus X. One difference is that the rear bumper has a built-in receiver and wiring plug, and backup sensors are on the hatch instead of the bumper. I hope it has better ground clearance than my T-X. Crawling around under my T-X, it has well over 7" of clearance everywhere except right under the engine, where it drops to about 6.5". The specification is only about 5.5" - I guess that's at full load? If they fix the engine manifod drop point, they could get a reasonable 7" or more of ground clearance everywhere. Better ground clearance and higher towing capacity would make my T-X a much nicer car.

Yes, that's the big question - the next two years of a major down market in the critical condition that Ford has now. They get a double whammy from a bad economy causing less people wanting to buy now, difficulty of financing for those who do try to buy, and all at the same time Ford is spending lots of funds trying to reinvent itself. From what I've already seen, I have great faith in Mulally. He's done everything right so far, and he's proven he looks well ahead to deal with such issues in whatever way necessary. I suspect the biggest hardship will be born by Ford employees who will need to be cut horribly for Ford to survive the next couple years. I can imagine a scene sort of like where good people are tossed off the life raft so at least some others can make it to land. (And maybe some of those tossed can be picked up later.)

I thought Ford was a bargain of the century when I bought last month at $4.50. I again thought it was a bargain of the century when I bought a lot more yesterday at $2.50. Now I think it's a super fabulous bargain at $2.00. But Ford is over 30% of my investment portfolio now. So no more buying for me. I just lost a lot of money in the last few days, in theory. But I'm buying Ford now for the long term gain - more than two years. By that time I expect Ford will have transformed as follows, just to name a few. Well designed and efficient small cars from Europe start selling in the US. EcoBoost is spread across all Ford cars, increasing fuel efficiency 25% across Ford's entire line, on top of the smaller car and Hybrid efficiency. Ford has more overall hybrids, small cars, and much better fuel efficiency in all vehicles to draw customers. Customer perception of the superb (Toyota-like) quality that Ford has already achieved finally becomes clear to the market. Everyone fearful or unable to buy a car today will buy in a year or two, creating even greater demand. Ford's extensive fresh Crossover line up is appreciated, needed by those coming to reality after fleeing to smaller cars. SYNC 2.0 and other electronics draw in the younger crowd (along with quality low-cost efficient cars). No low margin sales to fleets boost Ford's profitability. Factory capacity matches real sales, reducing Ford's costs. Reduced work force from layoffs, and renegotiated union contracts start significantly reducing labor costs. Ford consolidation goes global for reduced operational cost and overall manufacturing efficiency. Mulally has done a fabulous job in transforming Ford to achieve the above. He's cut costs drastically, and made amazingly sharp right turns in the big ship called Ford. He's got Toyota's top marketing guy and many other aces in his hand. The only obstacle in way of a great come-back for Ford is them running out of time and money before it happens, especially with the slow market. But Mullaly has planned for rough times a lot of cash to go for quite a while (1.5 years?), with reserves, and is smart enough to not let the cash bucket run dry. Car sales next year don't matter so much as they expected 2009 to be a major retooling of their offerings with high losses anyway. Also, the government is proposing to help even more with direct injections of cash into US companies to keep them going. I suspect Ford will be near the front of the government give-away line. So overall, I don't see a terrible downside (bankruptcy or sell off) as highly likely, and a lot of up side, if you just look at the long term.

Me! I finally found the perfect family vehicle that will completely embarrass my kids!!!! :lol: Oh, but wait, I already bought me the Taurus X for that purpose. :rolleyes: (Note: I love the T-X, especially when hauling lots of people and gear on long trips.)

Except for the shell, the Flex is very similar to my Taurus X. You can see the crash test videos of the T-X on Ford's web site. I was impressed that even with all the compression of the front end during a frontal and offset collision, the windshield only got a little crack but didn't break. The tires stayed inflated, and everything from the firewall back looked fine. At the same time you see the car fill up with approprate air bags while the outer shell structure remains intact and solid. It's impressive and shows you how very safe the cars have become. Like the Flex the Taurus X is also rated for 24 MPG on the highway. If I stay at 65 MPH and lower on near level highways, I can get 26-27 MPG average. Coming back from Tahoe to San Jose, I got 26.5 MPG over the 400 mile trip, even with four bikes on the rear rack and a couple traffic jams of about an hour each. Without the jams, I might of been in the 28-29 MPG range. Commuting to work that's 70% highway, I'm getting 23-25 MPG combined average over the entire week. The ecoboost coming out next year should improve mileage by 25% - or up over 30 MPG for this big people mover!

AWD might help a little in some places that haven't been plowed yet. Yet I found what matters even more than AWD is very good snow tires (not "all-weather"). With my rear wheel drive Merkur Scorpio, I could get through about anything including a couple feet of snow with good dedicated studded snow tires, that I swapped out on all four wheels in the bad seasons. And good snow tires help on more than just accelleration. Unlike AWD, they also help on stopping and cornering.

He was brought in to get the Detroit thinking out of Detroit, and been amazingly successful for an airplane guy. He's made a lot of good, tough, insightful decisions. In the last year, I've seen Ford: Get rid of Jaguar and Land Rover to focus more on getting innovative solid core Ford products. First getting a sufficient fund to survive the few years of innovation needed. Cutting production and costs to match actual sales, reducing losses Getting manufacturing costs at competitive levels with the Unions (replacing older high cost workers with new lower cost ones) Allowing the successful sexy European designs into Detroit through combined design teams, "Partnering Ford with Ford" as he puts it. Globalizing the Ford design and production, not so US-centric. Pushing for more rapid concept car introduction into the market with less neutering by manufacturing. Hiring Toyota's top marketing guy, Jim Farley Promoting EcoBoost Dramatically mproving the Ford quaility and reliability, and getting the message out. And much more. Well worth his bucks to save the company and make some nice products finally for the benefit of all.

1. Automatic 911 dialing after a crash via bluetooth and your cell phone if you don't stop it within 10 seconds. Unlike On-star it goes right to 911 saving time, and no subscription fee. 2. Vehicle status report sent from your car via bluetooth and your cell phone to a Ford web site for data reduction into human form. It can be forwarded to you via email or text message back to your phone. I'm hoping it will read out my tire pressures to me as I'm too lazy to bend over and get dirty to check. More on syncmyride.com

Ha, Ha, Ha,.. Funny April Fools joke. Oh, wait, this is for real!

That's exactly my thought, and explains why I just bought a Taurus X Limited. I looked very carefully at the Flex details and noted it had almost all the same features and dimensions as the Taurus X, except it was a little bigger and longer on the outside. Yet when I priced it, it came in over $4K more. And I suspect I won't get the discounts like I get with the Taurus X either. I bought the T-X Limited loaded (Nav, DVD, Aux air, Satellite Radio,...) for about $30.5K. It's got lots of room for my family, the plethora of modern electronics and sensors are competitive with an AWACS plane. SYNC pulls it all together simply. I get up to 28 MPG on flat highways, 25 MPG on rolling hills. The power is excellent. The responsive handling is superb. It's very quiet. The only thing that put me off was the cheap plastic interior, and imperfect design. For instance, they should have put the Nav screen up higher. However, the wood and chrome accents do help a little. The door panels and arm rests have a very nice feel and decor. I suspect others are also put off by the family-wagon look which I actually like. Although when next to my family Sable wagon, the T-X looks like a giant. My Sable's wheels look like they're toys. In any case, I also just can't understand why Ford doesn't advertise such a star vehicle. Maybe they figure if they only sell 3K/month by word of mouth, it's not attractive to consumers and heavy advertising may be more money down the drain. They're saving their advertising bucks to steer customers the expensive Flex, that will have a lot more profit for them. And the T-X will be left for sale to the smarter customers. :-)

I'm thinking we should just make a new post like "The Panther was ALWAYS a piece of crap" or something like that, so they'll all be sucked away into that thread to romp with each other and not bog down other threads with repeated flames and slime tossing.

Yes, if they'd just put a modern power train on the Scorpio, it would have been amazing. The entire interior ergonomics were a delight, very easy to use and control. For example all doors unlocked and locked in sync with what the driver did, inside or out. Tremendous leg room front and back, lots of comfort for five. They got an expansive cabin by pushing the wheels to the outside corners. Shown better in the photo below, where you can better see the sleekness and length of the car. (Thanks for the link.) And my Scorpio was a prettier metallic blue, IMO.

I owned the Merkur Scorpio for 14 years, and have also owned a Mercury Sable Wagon for another 8 years. There's no comparison between the two vehicles, other than perhaps four wheels (and a steering wheel). Everything is very different about the cars. The Scorpio has got to be one of the best handling cars made, being born on the AutoBahn in European style. I drove it once for a couple hours at 130 MPH in the middle of the night when I was late for a talk in another state. It went the whole way like I was driving down a residential neighborhood, smooth, quiet, and easy to handle with the variable ratio steering. The rear wheel drive made handling superb with an exact 50/50 front/rear weight ratio. Getting on and off freeways, I wouldn't need to hit the brakes, just take the highway on-ramp at 65 MPH while the advanced suspension sucked up any bumps at high lateral G forces without breaking free. On tight curves it had great feel as I could hear all four wheels starting to squeal simultaneously before it started to break, giving me a warning. And after breaking free on a turn, it slid uniformly allowing an easy recovery. The small radius turning ability allowed me to turn around without backing up even in small alleys. The Scorpio had a giant hatch and luxury power reclining rear seats, nice for family rides and occasional big hauls. It also had antilock brakes when it was rare, and many other advanced features for the time. The Sable Wagon, in contrast, just gets me from A to B in traffic. It can't handle at all, even though I've tried many sport tires and stiffer suspensions. With the front wheel drive, the front end just washes out and nose dives, and the back wallows around somewhere. I'm lucky to get up to 40 MPH on a freeway exit ramp. Parking feels like I'm docking a battleship with big wide turns and long distance planning needed. If I punch it, the high power engine is wasted as the front wheels just scrub and bounce on the road before it gets going, unlike a rear wheel drive. The Sable is made in the American style with an over sized engine and miserable handling. I like it for my family utility. But it's just basic transport, IMHO. Ditto on the snow tires. They're even more useful than AWD. They help greatly with all vehicle forces, braking, cornering, and accelerating. AWD only helps you accelerate faster into trouble. I swapped dedicated snow tires during the winter on my RWD Scorpio and I could pass snow plows.

Ah, the Merkur Scorpio, my first Ford and a superb European family/sports car. It could corner like crazy, performed well with only 150 HP due to it's good transmission, had 50/50 balance with rear wheel drive, and was quiet and easy to handle at 130 MPH. The rear seats reclined for passengers, yet you could fold them and fit massive amounts of cargo into the hatch. I'd buy another in an instant if they still imported them. But the stiff sporty car didn't fit into a Lincoln/Mercury dealer, where people came looking for cushy. No wonder it didn't sell here, even though it was Car of the Year in Europe. (And the Scorpio conversion to the US model was botched by idiots. My favorite botch was when the Scorpio was recalled because they forgot to put an "Off" button on the climate control, even though I had a sun roof. They had to replace the entire control panel to add the Off button. ) And the Taurus X is a great car. I just bought one for my big family of five. But the wagon-like styling seems to be putting people off. And now Ford is neglecting it without the slightest advertising. I don't even see it listed in the Ford lineup in the newspapers. Even though it's won lots of high recommendations, top safety, and top quality awards, it's being sent out of the Ford fold to silently die. So rephrasing the question slightly, my "favorite cars" that were also Ford failures are: Merkur Scorpio Ford Taurus X

But now they must have seen the error of their ways. Some good Toyota models were also screwed recently for lack of history. For example, in their recent review (Jan '08) of three row crossovers, "the Buick Enclave, Hyundai Veracruz, and Toyota Highlander are too new to have a reliability record, so we cannot recommend them." (You may need a CR subscription to see the link.) Yet the Highlander has been around for years, with a recent makeover for more room. In contrast, the Taurus and Taurus X had a significant power train redesign with a new engine and transmission replacing the CVT. So some of the reliabilty history for the Five Hundred and Freestyle shouldn't have applied to the new models. Maybe CR deduced the engine and transmission reliabilty from history of other vehicles, since the same engine/transmission is used on a lot of Fords? In any case, looks to me like Ford got a nice break on this one by CR.

Consumer Reports rates all items in a completely different way than Car and Driver. They rate first on "consumer" issues, such as safety, reliabilty, and value, .. more so than performance, beauty, power, quietness, and handling. If they have no reliabilty history, they can't recomend a new car, no matter how nice it is. The CR rating needs to be looked at from it's measure on a different dimension as part of a car's whole picture, not by itself. For example, you can decide yourself if you want to take a chance on a great new model's reliabilty, based on your own opinion of the company's performance or whatever. But you might get stuck with a lemon of the fleet. You decide.

Well, the Taurus X Limited was certainly my top pick. I purchased mine a month ago. Absolutely love the car as it fits all my family (and mountain biking) needs perfectly. It's amazing such a great vehicle with excellent reviews is selling so poorly. Ford's complete lack of advertising and promotion doesn't help. I figure the Taurus X is just Ford's unloved and neglected child that they want to forget about.

I appreciated the heads up, even though I subscribe to Consumer Reports. mlhm5's synopsys in this thread was an accurate rendition of the relevant parts of the report. And Consumer Reports does a very different take than say Edmunds or Car and Driver. They look at safety and value more than just performance. I don't get how this is a repeat of anything without value?