Retained Customers When Ford Cars Are Gone.

[jcartwright99]

25 minutes ago, akirby said:

Poster child.  I think they even admitted that was their plan and it didn’t work a couple of years ago.

 

They did earlier this year. Here is an excerpt from an actual nice article from CNBC.

 

"Sales in its key North American market fell 15% as Nissan struggles to recover in the United States, where aggressive discounting has clobbered margins and tarnished its brand image.

“I don’t want my brand, I don’t want Nissan, to be considered cheap,” Uchida told Reuters in an interview, adding that he would push to restore the quality of sales, particularly in the United States."

[rperez817]

4 hours ago, akirby said:

And I feel the need to remind you once again that market share and sales without profit are meaningless. 

 

No need to remind me akirby sir. I've said many times that sales and market share growth are not what Ford needs now, and mentioned Jim Blasingame's descriptions of growth fallacies.

Fallacy 1. You can grow out of organizational problems.

In a state of denial or ignorance, businesses sometimes think getting bigger will fix management and organizational shortcomings. If a tree is bent, fertilizing it won't make it grow straighter – only faster in the wrong direction. If you have organizational challenges, don't grow until they’re resolved."

 

There are many many organizational issues at Ford that need to be fixed first. Those issues were responsible for the company's market share erosion in the U.S. as mentioned in my previous post, and also why they eventually gave up completely in other markets globally. Jim Hackett's fitness initiatives attempt to address these deep rooted problems.

Edited August 13, 2020 by rperez817

[fuzzymoomoo]

3 hours ago, jcartwright99 said:

 

They did earlier this year. Here is an excerpt from an actual nice article from CNBC.

 

"Sales in its key North American market fell 15% as Nissan struggles to recover in the United States, where aggressive discounting has clobbered margins and tarnished its brand image.

“I don’t want my brand, I don’t want Nissan, to be considered cheap,” Uchida told Reuters in an interview, adding that he would push to restore the quality of sales, particularly in the United States."

It's been going on with Nissan for so long it may be too far gone to be redeemed. 

[jcartwright99]

2 minutes ago, fuzzymoomoo said:

It's been going on with Nissan for so long it may be too far gone to be redeemed. 

 

Let's see, they decided to come out with the Versa which was at one point the cheapest car you could buy in the US. That car was a huge hunk of garbage. They ruined the Sentra, Maxima, and Murano which were once reputable cars. Went all in on CVT's and 3.5/3.7 engine in everything. Technology was crap even including Infinity. The pretty much then let the majority of their cars rot and on the vine slapping ridiculous discounts on them and pandering to sub prime lenders. I mean how many years have the 370z and GT R been essentially the same cars with visual tweaks and adding more power? 

 

It got to a point where when I was renting cars, I would I refused to take any Nissan product. Don't have that problem now since I am only traveling in my car now thanks to Covid.

[mpcmotorsports]

19 minutes ago, jcartwright99 said:

 

Let's see, they decided to come out with the Versa which was at one point the cheapest car you could buy in the US. That car was a huge hunk of garbage. They ruined the Sentra, Maxima, and Murano which were once reputable cars. Went all in on CVT's and 3.5/3.7 engine in everything. Technology was crap even including Infinity. The pretty much then let the majority of their cars rot and on the vine slapping ridiculous discounts on them and pandering to sub prime lenders. I mean how many years have the 370z and GT R been essentially the same cars with visual tweaks and adding more power? 

 

It got to a point where when I was renting cars, I would I refused to take any Nissan product. Don't have that problem now since I am only traveling in my car now thanks to Covid.

Just spent two weeks behind the wheel of a 2020 Nissan Kicks while my 17 Fusion was in the body shop. Talk about a shit box! Gutless, cheap with the disaster of a CVT transmission. Made the Ecosport look and feel modern! Over aggressive safety tech, dark backup camera view, and their NissanConnect system was abysmal. Made Toyota's Entune look good. Neither compare to Sync3. 

 

I agree with the other posters that Nissan might be too far gone to recover. Once they were right up there with Honda and Toyota. Not sure where I would rank them but way down the line.

[fuzzymoomoo]

When I was on my honeymoon 5 years ago I refused a Nissan rental. A. Because I felt guilty about driving a foreign car and B. I already knew it would be a shitbox. 5 years ago. I think even less of them now. Aside from having total garbage credit I honestly don't know why anyone would purposely buy one. 

[jpd80]

8 hours ago, fuzzymoomoo said:

When I was on my honeymoon 5 years ago I refused a Nissan rental. A. Because I felt guilty about driving a foreign car and B. I already knew it would be a shitbox. 5 years ago. I think even less of them now. Aside from having total garbage credit I honestly don't know why anyone would purposely buy one. 

Something's a missin' in da Nissan.

[grbeck]

17 hours ago, fuzzymoomoo said:

Aside from having total garbage credit I honestly don't know why anyone would purposely buy one. 

 

More people base their buying decision solely on price than you would think. 

 

A relative had a Chevrolet Avalanche with over 150,000 miles on the odometer. The Chevy was starting to require costly repairs, and he and his wife had just had a baby. He replaced the Avalanche with a Nissan Rouge, because the Nissan had the lowest lease payment for vehicles of that size. 

[akirby]

1 hour ago, grbeck said:

 

More people base their buying decision solely on price than you would think. 

 

A relative had a Chevrolet Avalanche with over 150,000 miles on the odometer. The Chevy was starting to require costly repairs, and he and his wife had just had a baby. He replaced the Avalanche with a Nissan Rouge, because the Nissan had the lowest lease payment for vehicles of that size. 

Nissan Leaf sales dropped almost 50% from 2014 to 2015 when they went from $199 leases to something in the $250 range, give or take.  I don’t know if the difference was due to tax credits or they were just blowing them out below cost but it made a huge difference in sales.

[jpd80]

5 hours ago, akirby said:

Nissan Leaf sales dropped almost 50% from 2014 to 2015 when they went from $199 leases to something in the $250 range, give or take.  I don’t know if the difference was due to tax credits or they were just blowing them out below cost but it made a huge difference in sales.

I recall a similar thing happening with Chevrolet Volt sales, GM had to keep killer lease deals going ($199/mth)

otherwise buyers  would disappear. I don't know if it was a conditioned response from those buyers or

symptomatic of how BEV buyers reacted  to GM marketing Volt as an extended range electric vehicle

since many only seemed to use the BEV range almost exclusively.

[AGR]

On 8/13/2020 at 3:47 PM, fuzzymoomoo said:

When I was on my honeymoon 5 years ago I refused a Nissan rental. A. Because I felt guilty about driving a foreign car and B. I already knew it would be a shitbox. 5 years ago. I think even less of them now. Aside from having total garbage credit I honestly don't know why anyone would purposely buy one. 

 

On two of my trips to SoCal, I rented a Corolla and a Sentra. The Sentra was less of a shitbox than the Corolla. I'm not sure why the Corolla is still available and the Focus and Cruze aren't. But maybe that's my domestic bias showing. (the other time in SoCal was a family trip, we rode in my dad's E150 conversion van)

Edited August 15, 2020 by AGR

[SteelyD]

Shame that Ford couldn't have held onto Mazda or Volvo. Maybe the JV with VW will produce a car ot two?

[silvrsvt]

34 minutes ago, SteelyD said:

Shame that Ford couldn't have held onto Mazda or Volvo. Maybe the JV with VW will produce a car ot two?

 

Why? They where distractions that didn't really add much value to the core product.

Outside of getting access to the D3 platform and maybe better safety items, the only reason Volvo was bought was to spend all the profit they made off selling 300K a year Explorers and other SUVs in the late 1990s. 

Mazda has been a bit player in the Japanese market that got started making products for Mitsubishi back in the 1930s. Looking at things really dismissively, Mazda was a major reason why Ford EU and Ford NA didn't integrate products better til 15-20 years ago. 

People who want cars are in the minority-Trucks and CUV/SUVs are on track to make up 70% of market this year

https://www.statista.com/statistics/276506/change-in-us-car-demand-by-vehicle-type/

With that said, would you rather compete in a market with 6-8 other manufactures that only make up 10% of the market, or in one that makes up better then 50% of the market? You have alot more opportunities in the bigger one. 

I think Ford and GM figured out that they rather own segments (Pickups) then fight the Accord/Civic/Camry/Corralla, which are part of a shrinking market that doesn't have as much profit potential. 

 

Ford rather sell 300K F-150s at an average of 40-50K then sell 250K Accords at maybe 25-30K a year. 

[rperez817]

1 hour ago, SteelyD said:

Shame that Ford couldn't have held onto Mazda or Volvo. Maybe the JV with VW will produce a car ot two?

 

During that era in the 1990s and 2000s, Ford couldn't even manage its in-house brands (Ford, Mercury, and Lincoln) properly let alone companies that it acquired. Both Mazda and Volvo Cars are now better off with Ford mismanagement out of the picture.

 

Ford's press release about the Volkswagen JV said "Ford to build new electric vehicle for Europe based on Volkswagen’s Modular Electric Drive toolkit beginning in 2023; could approach a multiyear 600,000-plus units". Don't know if that will be a passenger car or crossover/SUV. https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2020/06/10/ford-volkswagen-sign-agreements-for-joint-projects.html

[akirby]

1 hour ago, rperez817 said:

 

During that era in the 1990s and 2000s, Ford couldn't even manage its in-house brands (Ford, Mercury, and Lincoln) properly let alone companies that it acquired. Both Mazda and Volvo Cars are now better off with Ford mismanagement out of the picture.

 

Ford only owned 33.4% of Mazda - it was really just a big partnership - and it was Ford's management that kept them from bankruptcy in the late 90s.

 

It is true that Jag/LR/Aston and Volvo were better off without Ford at the time.  

[bzcat]

1 hour ago, akirby said:

 

Ford only owned 33.4% of Mazda - it was really just a big partnership - and it was Ford's management that kept them from bankruptcy in the late 90s.

 

It is true that Jag/LR/Aston and Volvo were better off without Ford at the time.  

 

Ford owned 33.4% of Mazda only so that it can avoid consolidation under Japanese law, which would have taken on Mazda's debt onto Ford's balance sheet and created other problems (e.g. Mazda would become a foreign owned company operating in Japan so had to file different security and regulatory registration etc). For all practical purpose, Mazda was a Ford subsidiary, not a partnership... there was no independent owners of Mazda that controlled a parent company for Ford to partner with. Remember, Mazda basically went bankrupt and Ford had to rescue it. Various Japanese banks and tier one suppliers agreed to convert their debt to equity and owned the rest of Mazda with Ford as the largest and controlling shareholder. Ford ran the company and appointed the majority of the board seats up until Mularlly sold Ford's stake to Toyota affiliated banks. And it was also during this period that C1 platform and Duratec HE family of engines were developed under Mazda's engineering lead. 

 

Volvo was a good acquisition but Ford failed to really integrate the operation with Ford. Volvo products were complimentary to Ford and with the right strategy, this could have been really successful. To this day, I'm still unsure why Ford didn't build XC90 in the US with other D3 vehicles or why EUCD production were split in so many sites in Europe.  

 

Mazda and Volvo were also central to Ford's strategy in China with both playing central roles in JVs with different local companies to give Ford the scale it needed to compete with VW, GM, Toyota, and Hyundai.

 

Jaguar and Land Rover and Aston Martin were all problems... Ford bought them because the executive ranks at that time had all these Europeans and people who came up thru Ford Europe. There were not good purchases and good thing Ford got out of them.

[Tl99cobra]

I think ford helped jaguar at the time. I have a 2001 xkr and except for fuel pumps, really reliable. It has the lincoln ls 4.0 in it but supercharged. I replaced the chain tensioner for problem prevention and that is it.

I think ford made jaguar more reliable from then on.

[akirby]

49 minutes ago, Tl99cobra said:

I think ford helped jaguar at the time. I have a 2001 xkr and except for fuel pumps, really reliable. It has the lincoln ls 4.0 in it but supercharged. I replaced the chain tensioner for problem prevention and that is it.

I think ford made jaguar more reliable from then on.

 

I hate to break it to you but that Jaguar 4.0L V8 (and the Lincoln 3.9) was a jaguar engine, not Ford.  The only Ford parts that Jaguar used was the 3.0L Duratec V6.  All the othere shared parts came mostly from Jaguar.

Edited August 17, 2020 by akirby

[Tl99cobra]

Still, reliable for me. 

Many of the parts on that engine are labeled fomoco though.

[jpd80]

4 hours ago, bzcat said:

 

Ford owned 33.4% of Mazda only so that it can avoid consolidation under Japanese law, which would have taken on Mazda's debt onto Ford's balance sheet and created other problems (e.g. Mazda would become a foreign owned company operating in Japan so had to file different security and regulatory registration etc). For all practical purpose, Mazda was a Ford subsidiary, not a partnership... there was no independent owners of Mazda that controlled a parent company for Ford to partner with. Remember, Mazda basically went bankrupt and Ford had to rescue it. Various Japanese banks and tier one suppliers agreed to convert their debt to equity and owned the rest of Mazda with Ford as the largest and controlling shareholder. Ford ran the company and appointed the majority of the board seats up until Mularlly sold Ford's stake to Toyota affiliated banks. And it was also during this period that C1 platform and Duratec HE family of engines were developed under Mazda's engineering lead. 

 

Volvo was a good acquisition but Ford failed to really integrate the operation with Ford. Volvo products were complimentary to Ford and with the right strategy, this could have been really successful. To this day, I'm still unsure why Ford didn't build XC90 in the US with other D3 vehicles or why EUCD production were split in so many sites in Europe.  

 

Mazda and Volvo were also central to Ford's strategy in China with both playing central roles in JVs with different local companies to give Ford the scale it needed to compete with VW, GM, Toyota, and Hyundai.

 

Jaguar and Land Rover and Aston Martin were all problems... Ford bought them because the executive ranks at that time had all these Europeans and people who came up thru Ford Europe. There were not good purchases and good thing Ford got out of them.

Speaking with a former engineer on the Ford-Mazda engine development, I made the mistake of saying that Mazda was lead on the project. The answer was an emphatic No and by his account, Ford bankrolled the project and insisted it be a true co-development as both partners had different applications and tunes for the engines so development had to cover both sets of parameters.

 

To this day, he still rises to the challenge when posters innocently mention Ford using Mazda developed engines. 

[bzcat]

Jaguar AJ V8 are all build by Ford (still to this day) in a Ford engine plant. Saying it is a Jaguar engine or Ford engine is semantics. Jaguar was fully owned by Ford and this engine was developed while Ford owned the place. It has a lot of design similarity with Duratec V6. Even the now retired Aston Martin's V12 was based on the Duratec V6. 

 

It's not like Volvo's I5 that dates to before Ford ownership.

[jpd80]

DEW necessitated the use of the AJ V8 as the Ford MOD V8 would not load from underneath because the inner spring aprons were too close.

[jpd80]

A lot of people also think that Mazda were lead engineering on C1, they weren’t, it was developed in Cologne by Ford Europe with input from Mazda and Volvo but the latter was lead on EUCD development and it’s own P2/P24.

[akirby]

3 hours ago, bzcat said:

Jaguar AJ V8 are all build by Ford (still to this day) in a Ford engine plant. Saying it is a Jaguar engine or Ford engine is semantics. Jaguar was fully owned by Ford and this engine was developed while Ford owned the place. It has a lot of design similarity with Duratec V6. Even the now retired Aston Martin's V12 was based on the Duratec V6. 

 

It's not like Volvo's I5 that dates to before Ford ownership.

Built by Ford in a dedicated jaguar “plant within a plant”.  And not used by ford anywhere outside dew98.   It may have some similarities but to me it’s a jaguar engine.  And a damn good one at that.  In my Lincoln LS sport it was unbelievably smooth.

[jcartwright99]

1 hour ago, akirby said:

Built by Ford in a dedicated jaguar “plant within a plant”.  And not used by ford anywhere outside dew98.   It may have some similarities but to me it’s a jaguar engine.  And a damn good one at that.  In my Lincoln LS sport it was unbelievably smooth.

 

Oh running great it was smooth. The problem was, it ate through head gaskets and coil packs.  Oil would drip in and foul up the coil packs. I had mine till 130k. After replacing head gasket twice and 6 of the packs, I’d had enough. While it was a good engine, that car would of been a monster with the 4.6 and a limited slip in the back.