I agree with most of your comments and Ford could have introduced a Mustang 4-Door Sedan years ago and did nothing, even with the excess capacity at the Flat Rock plant. I do have to disagree with your comment about it being tougher to make a car unique compared to trucks and utilities. Agree on the trucks but as far as SUV's and Crossovers, but other than front end treatments, they all look alike basically.
But in the grand scheme of things, would they be able to fill another 250K+ of C or CD sized products in a plant if they did that? At least in North America or South America.
I think Ford has figured out that they rather sell all what they can make vs increasing market share by building another plant to add another 200K or so of capacity.
I'd expect in the future some plants get realigned with new plants that are being built now for EVs.
I don't have the latest updates to the stock order specifications that Ford starting requiring Dealers to use a few years ago, but the last I saw, there were still far too many order and option combinations available for stock orders. As @akirby stated, it's not rocket science!
Is there a way to set the rear doors to stay unlocked? When I stop the car, I have to open the Driver's door before someone in the back seat can open the door either from the outside or inside.
Yes, I have set the little twist things to unlock, and I have set the child switch thing on the driver's door not to be locked.
But when I stop the car and my wife gets out, when she trys to open the rear door from the outside, it is still locked.
I have to open the Driver's Door in order for the rear doors to be unlocked.
And she has long finger nails and those stupid squeeze to open handles (I liked the handles on the 2020 Navagator better) and the door is locked, it often breaks her finger nails.
Steve in Denver
Pretty much.
Ford recently started production of the right-hand drive c-segment Territory; it replaces the more expensive Escape/Kuga in some markets.
Ford needs smaller more affordable models below it. Many rest-of-the-world markets rely on C-segment and smaller vehicles.
I still think they could leverage the Evos (Mondeo Sport now) and offer that as their "sedan" offering while offering the added utility of the hatch.....the work is already done, why not use it? And/or do a Mustang sedan that can target a different buyer/higher price and be more profitable.
I also think they should've brought Zephyr over.
And follow the Toyota path of keeping the same platform and making minor tweaks, not expensive massive redos.
For over 2 decades, Toyota has admitted they lost money on the Camry. Still, they believe they will upgrade to other Toyota products or Lexus if they have a good reliable experience with that vehicle. And that's with Toyota making incremental small changes each generation. I can imagine how much Ford invested each time they had a revolutionary change.
Meanwhile, across the table, you had Chrysler with the 300, which had tiny changes throughout the year on a product whose roots date back to the 1995 E-Class, essentially making it the Panther, of our time.
Subcompacts in North American are simply the cheapest transportation, while full sized trucks are super desirable and plentiful. But in Europe and other parts the full sized truck market is non existent and subcompacts are desirable.
I don’t think they knew exactly how popular the truck would be and also how popular Bronco Sport would be. Remember they’re all in the same factory so if you can sell 350k between the two then there is no capacity left for another utility. Plus new Escape volume was unknown at that time.
I still think they should have added a second C2 plant in Mexico then they would have many more options including Edge and Nautilus.