justins

I'm looking at photos of this thing next to the current gen Fusion on MT.com and cannot get over how far ahead of the current gen this thing is. This is not just a new model. Looks wise this really is a quantum leap.

It's the Holden badge over here that does it. Stick a Lion on the front of anything and it's guaranteed to walk straight out of the showrooms. Don't bother telling them that their Captiva is a Daewoo, because they just won't believe you (they know what a Daewoo IS, just not that they purchased one). People STILL haven't cottoned on to the fact that it's impossible for a car to have SIDI (Spark Ignition Direct Injected) Direct Injection but hey, it sounds FANTASTIC! They rebadged the old Daewoo Kalos a Holden Barina and it sold double what it did as a Daewoo. The SAME CAR! The Cruze is "Made in Australia" despite only actually being 60% produced here. Who cares, they say. The worst part is that all of these cars are average at best in their respective classes. They sell regardless of what the pieces of rubbish are underneath the badge. The Holden Lion is aspirational, and unfortunately, that aspiration is blind to anything resembling sense or reason.

I think is where it's at for FoA. If it's a vehicle that is going to be sold in multiple markets for a small price and development costs need to be spared where possible, FoA seem to be the goto guys. Which is great considering the largest developing markets in the world for mass auto consumption are India and China, where low priced vehicles will probably dominate the landscape for some time to come.

I posted this elsewhere, but here's a thought... Initially, Ford didn't HAVE to publicise the obvious. Their was enough bad publicity and feeling towards GM and Chrysler that all they HAD to do was advertise about their vehicles and they were pretty much guranteed to have people run to their dealers, becuase people had such bad perceptions of the others. Nearly 2 years on though, with GM and Chrysler now starting to do OK again and that "Halo" effect starting to wane a little, it was an opportune time for Ford to gently remind the good folk about the bailout, just to keep their own run going... At the time, every article written about Ford contained the lines "Ford was the only US car maker not to take the bailout" but recently this has reduced and GM and Chrysler have started getting some good press regarding sales etc. Guess what? Now every article written about the ad contains the lines "Ford was the only US carmaker not to take the government bailout". It's caused a stir and the majority of people seem to like it and agree with it's sentiment. It doesn't have to be seen on TV to get ingrained in people's minds and thoughts. TBH, I think this is another stroke of social media genius from the Ford marketing team. I don't think they're stupid. I think they knew exactly what they were doing with this one. Blogs the world over have shown the ad, forums the world over are discussing the topic again, the press have shown it all over the world. It's the topic on everyone in the car world's lips again.

Surprising that you'd say it only looked a bit bigger than the current US Ranger though. The new Ranger, from memory, is substantially bigger than the current RoW Ranger, which is substantially bigger than the current US Ranger, which is based on the almost 2 generations old RoW Ranger / Courier...

RIP, Old friend. I remember as a kid thinking the TC was the ultimate stretch limo. I think every kid who ever dreamed of being the next Donald Trump wanted one of these things in their horseshoe shaped driveway :-)

and the link

Isn't this the company that purchased Saleen off Steve Saleen, therefore these vehicles aren't the TRUE Saleen mustangs?

A version of the Galant, called the 380, was sold in Oz between 2005 and 2008 with a 3.8l V6

Some people just like not having to wait for their PC to reboot in the morning, I suppose. Once read an article advocating for IT depts to set all office PCs to go into standby after 15 minutes so this didn't happen, seems Ford is sort of going down the same path.

This is great news - market share up 5% in 12 months, nearly 1 in 5 vehicles sold wears a blue oval. WOW :happy feet:

C4 is a Citroen so it was never going to be that anyway...