Economic uncertainty rarely helps, particularly with sports cars and PHEVs that may be more of a want than a need, and can therefore be put off easier IMO.

Laws and regulations can sometimes be weird, and have unintended consequences.  About 10 years ago Texas stopped the Polaris Slingshot from being sold because it wasn’t either a car or a motorcycle; and the issue apparently wasn’t the 3-wheel design, but rather lack of a “saddle” like motorcycles, most trikes, and Can-Am utilize.  Texas added “autocycle” classification which allows 3-wheelers with standard car seats and steering wheels to enjoy motorcycle advantages, and does not require a driver’s license with motorcycle endorsement.  Anyway, in Houston these 3 wheelers can use HOV lanes free of tolls just like motorcycles though many are as wide as a car and are no more fuel efficient, thereby defeating purpose of HOV lanes.   Perhaps in the future personal mobility vehicles similar to the VW NILS could be classified as an autocycle even though it has 4 wheels; provided it’s light and or narrow enough.  At very least any single-seat vehicle under 500 kg (1,100 pounds) and less than +/- 4-ft wide should enjoy same benefits as motorcycles from legal and regulatory standpoint.  The VW above is quite wide for a single seater, but there are now technologies available that allow for much narrower designs.

That's crazy - it should be across the board trim levels at least for body styles.  Bronco and Mustang can warrant having their own trims, as they're their own entities/have different purposes, but trucks should be the same and SUVs should be the same (whether or not that aligns with trucks).   I'd also advocate for similar feature groupings on all products i.e. 101A package includes X and Y on all products, 101B includes XYZ, etc.  That gets a bit more tricky on higher end products, where more content comes into play across a vehicle's trims, but still, more uniform makes it easier for customers AND I would imagine internally for ordering and design.

Big discounts on 24s.  $6k on regular escapes.  $10k on PHEVs.  And there are quite a few.  I expect we’ll either see price reductions (or at least no increases year over year) or they’ll cut production to maintain higher prices.

Yup, I get it's different circumstances, but the current result is still the same for another couple of years.

True but for totally different reasons.  We did see a big influx with Aviator, new Explorer, Ranger, Bronco, Maverick, Bronco Sport. Mach-e and Lightning.   And more recently new Nautilus.  But the mistakes on EV development really killed the momentum.

Once you were promoted to executive it was seen as a figurehead position - a ticket to easy street.  A reward for a long career.  When Mulally came in it was a huge wake up call.  He told Bill Ford he wouldn’t have to fire anybody - the bad ones would leave on their own after he forced them to do their jobs and work within his rules.  And they did.

The problem with Ford that apparently was never fixed is that each vehicle has its own team deciding names, trims, options and design features.  There should at least be corporate level oversight ensuring consistency across models.   You can almost always come up with some justification why your vehicle needs to be different but that’s where the executives have to step in and say it’s better for Ford as a whole to have these consistent and that outweighs individual benefits.

https://fordauthority.com/2025/03/ford-ceo-jim-farley-says-large-evs-over-50k-arent-viable/

The additional irony of them changing the SUVs to the "car" names is that the only other model using them was Escape (since they dropped Edge).....which also used truck names until the ....2013 (whichever on merged with Kuga).   So instead of just bringing Escape back to truck names, they changed 2 other models, while giving those two models truck trims anyway (Tremor and King Ranch)......   I understand the logic of unifying trim names on form factors (SUVs, trucks, "Bronco", etc).....but don't then undo your own name unification.....