At some point, ya got to just let them go. I advocate for a blended strategy. I don't believe Ford should just drive their volume into the ground by focusing purely on profit margin. But I also don't believe they should be building lose leaders just to have a lot of volume. Somewhere in the middle is the sweet spot.    I actually believe these brands that compete on price alone are kinda screwed. Brands like Nissan, and maybe to a lesser extent Kia and Hyundai. Because their built their entire brands around attributes that rivals can duplicate, low cost. Nissan buyers aren't loyal to Nissan, they're loyal to cheap cars. What happens to those buyers when Chinese brands inevitably make their way to the U.S? They're gonna ditch Nissan for BYD or whoever else can undercut Nissan on price.    This is why I've been one of the loudest voices on here in favor in Farley's no boring products mantra, leaning into Ford's icons. That not only improves profit margins, it's leaning into a strategy where people are loyal to ford, and it's unique attributes. It's building demand around brand qualities that are harder for rivals to compete with. 

Agreed. Apparently Farley has spoken a lot about trying to use skunkworks to speed up the development process and reduce cycle times. So hopefully they're able to apply that across their lineup. Ford really does have an issue with just letting products waste away and then canceling them claiming no-one bought them when they were outdated relative to rivals. Hopefully that component of Ford culture dies out.    What's the storage space like with the mach-e? I don't expect it to be on par with our explorer or maverick for obvious reasons, but if it's serviceable, roomy enough for what it is, that's good enough for me. 

They were obviously trying to keep Focus buyers with that styling.  The problem is most Focus buyers didn't care about styling, just price.  

I feel like we have both of those needs covered reasonably well with our Escape PHEV. Sure, there are some minor shortcomings (like 37 mile EV range) but it is a great compromise for our lifestyle.

This is essentially what got me to the point of my next car probably being EV. Driving my Escape hybrid, I just wish it could do electric all the time. That and that they finally built chargers down the road from my office building, so I can logistically make sense of how I’ll charge.   TBH rally cars look like jelly beans now although I’m not sure if there is a performance reason for that rather than a cost or “race Sunday sell Monday” mentality.

Agreed, hopefully it's like a case of Ford meets alpine styling instead of just being a jelly bean with rally lights tacked on. But I like the direction, I think it's fun and interesting. 

That's great to hear my friend. My wife has a '25 MME GT and says its the best car she's ever owned.    Hopefully, the dreaded Ford rot on the vine disease doesn't negatively impact MME or for that matter the upcoming CE1 products in the years to come. I'm cautiously optimistic that the newfangled design, engineering, and manufacturing techniques from the skunkworks will enable Ford to keep its future product lineup lookin' fresh and appealing over time while also keepin' costs under control.

Let’s see how those products look before we praise them.  If they just stick an extra fog light on and call it “rally inspired”, that’s not worth it either.  It’s good they’re at least thinking about it.   I think many times it takes people actually experiencing something before they accept it.

I wonder if this very rapid push to hybrid vehicles will have a trickle down effect to greater EV acceptance down the road. Hybrids are genuinely very common now in a lot of areas, both mild and plug-in. People who never thought they'd own a hybrid now do, and are realizing they actually kinda love it. That electrified vehicles can be smooth, reliable, and improvement over pure ICE.    I could see a lot of those hybrid owners who like the refinement making the jump to full EVs as they become more affordable and easier to live with. My parents were anti anything electrified, they thought it would be a hassle and unreliable. They love my maverick and are fully on the hybrid train now. Now my mom is strongly considering a full EV, a full 180 from where she was a few years ago. She loves the mach-e. She doesn't really view it as this boogieman tech anymore.    We probably won't get the CE1 truck just because it sounds similar to my maverick and I don't see the point of having two similarly sized trucks, and I like my maverick too much to trade it in, unless it shits the bed in a major way. But we're following other CE1 develops very closely. A mach-e style utility or some sort of hatchback/sedan if it's well executed has a high likelihood of being purchased by us. 

Agreed, it felt like BS had a lot of effort put into it's styling, and the escape was just put into a microwave. I feel like there's a way to do curvey styling that's more enticing. Heck, just look at Ford's European strategy now where they're gonna pull styling from rally cars. Even something like that could give escape styling a shot in the arm so to speak.