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Ford winning b/c it listened to enthusiasts....some.


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Thought this was a bit amusing;

 

 

 

 

We begged and pleaded with Ford to bring the beautiful, European-ized Mondeo to the United States as the Fusion and now the Fusion is reclaiming the mid-size territory once held by the Ford Taurus.8P

We demanded a European-ized Focus and a Ford Fiesta, and now those products are helping Ford have a big month while others stumble. The same for the Escape.9P

We also asked for turbodiesel wagons with manual transmissions in matte brown and a bunch of other crap that might work or might Saturn Astrafuck them into oblivion, so props to Ford for listening juuuuuuust enough.1011121314P

Now, I'm not foolish enough to believe that Ford simply read Jalopnik comments and copied down the thoughts into little notebooks. While I know for certain that higher ups at many car companies do trawl comments for insight, the realities of global platform sharing, production capacity, et cetera have more of an impact.1516P

Doesn't matter. Car enthusiasts pay the most attention and, while our demands can sometimes be a bit whacky, there's collective insight there. Clearly, we were right.17P

 

 

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data-author="RichardJensen" data-cid="874166" data-time="1380731529"><p>

Hey. You know what I'm going to do?<br />

<br />

I'm going to go back and cull all the things I said that were right, and present them as evidence of how smart I am, trusting that no one will bother to see how many times I was wrong.

You sound just like my ex.

Edited by Pioneer
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Why did Ford go with the European Mondeo? Because it was easier.

 

Why did Ford go with European Focus? Because it was easier.

 

Why did Ford go with the Kuga over a new platform for the Escape? Because it was easier.

 

These decisions were not made because they were uber-Europe-awesome-O. They were made because the timeframe in which those programs evolved, it just made a lot more sense.

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I'll take credit for Transit Connect... :)

 

When Mulally took over and said he was reviewing Ford's worldwide product portfolio for something that can be added to the US line up without costly modifications, I suggested Transit Connect here on BOF. Some people thought that was a crazy stupid idea... Americans would never buy a small FWD van!

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Why did Ford go with the European Mondeo? Because it was easier. cheaper

 

Why did Ford go with European Focus? Because it was easier. cheaper

 

Why did Ford go with the Kuga over a new platform for the Escape? Because it was easier. cheaper

 

These decisions were not made because they were uber-Europe-awesome-O. They were made because the timeframe in which those programs evolved, it just made a lot more financial sense.

 

FTFY

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I don't know if it was cheaper in every case, but it made more sense to do it to consoladate things long term, which would be cheaper down the road.

 

Don't understimate the cost savings from global platforms. I firmly believe that's what drove Ford to accelerate the Fusion, Escape and Focus launches to the point that they encountered a lot of launch problems. My guess is every month they spent with both platforms was costing them six figures or more. That type of potential cost savings can sometimes be worth some short term pain.

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BTW - we do this in IT all the time. Building new systems and applications to replace old ones with tens or hundreds of millions at stake from either increased revenue or cost savings and every month you delay represents a huge hit to the bottom line.

 

It's almost always painful and error prone but in most cases it's worth it in the end.

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Long term it was cheaper, but short term it was definitely not easier, as evidenced by the numerous launch delays & early QC issues.

I actually think many of those QC issues would have been worse had Ford continued with the number of platforms it had going before the re-org. Some of them may have been postponed since platforms wouldn't have been replaced on some vehicles as quickly, but those platforms would have changed at some point, and the problems would have cropped up then.

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I actually think many of those QC issues would have been worse had Ford continued with the number of platforms it had going before the re-org. Some of them may have been postponed since platforms wouldn't have been replaced on some vehicles as quickly, but those platforms would have changed at some point, and the problems would have cropped up then.

 

But with more time a lot of the problems could have been avoided or mitigated, especially the engineering related issues. I have a feeling they cut a lot of corners and process steps that would have caught a lot of the issues before launch. But not all of them obviously. Some were inherent with changing supply bases.

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ok Ford, DEANOpnik here, i want a 250 hp AWD Fiesta 2.0 eco, a 350hp AWD 2.3 eco Focus, a 400hp AWD 2.7 eco Fusion, I will give my 2 c on the Mustang when its released, but it wont have enough horsepower, it will STILL be too heavy and youll screw up the overhangs again, I want an upmarket 5.0 engined Taurus that can compete with the upmarket Euros, I want diesel in the F-150s, the Tranist full sized needs the diesel with AWD and EVERYTHING should have a no cost factory order avail Manual transmission, the smaller transit needs the 2.0 eco if its hauling 7 passengers...oh, and everything should be half price.....are you listening?....

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