An Exercise for Taurus Mourners and Fusion/500 bashers

[silvrsvt]

Things like the Edge aren't directly replacing anything. No one that wants a Fusion station wagon will look at the Edge and go "That's it!". Same thing in Europe with the Mondeo station wagon and their EUCD "People movers".

 

We're also talking about Y2K, and the things that were ready at the time, not what happened five to six years later. The 2000 Mondeo is already on its way out.

 

Anyway, Y2K...

 

There's the Taurus sedan, and the Taurus station wagon.

 

There's the Mondeo sedan, and the Mondeo station wagon.

 

Then the Mercury rebadges.

 

 

How many people want Station Wagons?

 

Not to mention Auto manufactures rather sell them more profitable CUV/SUV's instead

[pcsario]

How many people want Station Wagons?

 

Not to mention Auto manufactures rather sell them more profitable CUV/SUV's instead

 

I was only replying to a comment he made earlier, dealing with Ford's lineup circa Y2K.

 

To me the main point was the Taurus and midsize sedans in general.

Edited October 24, 2006 by pcsario

[pcsario]

That, I would agree with, but they still would have needed to replace the Taurus with something larger, keep the Escort, and not launch the Focus... otherwise a 2000 Fusion would have the same problem as the 2000 Contour, it's pricing structure. At the low end, you could buy a fully loaded Focus and at the high end you could buy a similarly equipped Taurus. Most people tended to buy a loaded Focus or a decently equiped Taurus over the Contour.

 

It's just a theoretical scenario concerning what one car could've done back then (as an answer to a point brought up by another poster), a quick fix or patch like I said. Nothing else would've been changed. The Focus would've arrived followed by the Mondeo and that's it, one would've replaced both the Escort and the Contour, the other would've complemented the Taurus to combat the Camry and the Accord as the "Fusion" mark 1. Then the current Fusion replaces it after a five year run and so on. If you think about it, it's not that different from what ended up happening, but it could've made a noticeable difference for Ford back then, which is my point I guess. Now it's just too late, since almost no one cares about Ford in that segment anymore. They moved on.

 

But when you look back at 2000 to say what they should have done, you unfortunately have to look at what the management af Ford was like back then. Ford was in the hands of Nasser. He was also busy spending billions on Volvo and LR. Looking back at his tenure at Ford, it seems that he had a simple plan. Ford would be the truck division, Mazda would be the entry level car with Volvo taking the rest of the slack. Lincoln would have been the upscale division, and Jag, LR, and AM the Luxury trio. All of Mercury along with Ford's cars would be gone. Had he stayed there another year or so, this may have been the face of Ford.

 

Well the NA Mondeo was one of the few bright spots in the Nasser era, he wanted to move Ford upwards & towards cars like it, and at the time, most people at Ford were extremely impressed by what FOE were working on around '98. The project had legs and was even federalized AFAIK, and did well in focus groups (there were even some pics of that floating around at the time), but it was to be built at Mexico and the UAW started to bitch and moan about that, so the project never got past that stage.

Edited October 24, 2006 by pcsario

[Roadrunner]

I wonder how the 500 sales would have been affected if it was named "Taurus 500" instead. This might give it a bit name recognition with the "Taurus" but then signifiying that it's a something new with the "500" .

 

I believe an average buyer would see through that and say, "It's a Taurus."

 

Then again, I'm not sure.