Ford plans to eliminate most passenger cars for US market, will focus on trucks, SUVs and commercial vehicles

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cwerdna

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Was surprised to hear of this earlier today...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-25/ford-ceo-plans-11-5-billion-more-cuts-pulls-ahead-margin-goal
"Ford Plans $11.5 Billion in Extra Cuts, Kills Most U.S. Cars" says
Ford said it won’t invest in new generations of sedans for the North American market, eventually reducing its car lineup to the Mustang and an all-new Focus Active crossover coming next year. By 2020, almost 90 percent of its portfolio in the region will be pickups, SUVs and commercial vehicles.

That means the end of the road for slow-selling sedans such as the Taurus, Fusion and Fiesta in the U.S. The automaker conspicuously left the Lincoln Continental and MKZ sedans off its hit list, but since those models share mechanical foundations with Ford siblings, their futures also are in doubt.
https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2018/04/25/ford-quarterly-profit-cuts-lineup/549463002/
"Ford announces $1.7B quarterly profit, deep cuts to car lineup" says
Ford, during its announcement Wednesday that it had a first-quarter profit of $1.7 billion, said its traditional car lineup soon will be trimmed to just the Mustang and a new Focus Active crossover that comes out next year.
...
Ford’s decision to pull back on car production reflects a shift in consumer sentiment that has had an impact across the automotive industry.

The full-size Taurus, midsize Fusion, small Fiesta and wagon-like C-Max will no longer be sold in North America, Ford officials said. Exactly when these models will stop being sold in the market hasn't been announced.
 
Yep, it's like they learned nothing from the 00's. As soon as all their big stupid SUVs are ready to sell, gas will spike as it always does and now they'll have nothing to compete. If only someone saw it coming... Again...
 
2k1Toaster said:
Yep, it's like they learned nothing from the 00's. As soon as all their big stupid SUVs are ready to sell, gas will spike as it always does and now they'll have nothing to compete. If only someone saw it coming... Again...
People don't learn from history :(
 
This will be very lucrative in the near term and perhaps quite risky and foolish in the long term if fuel prices become volatile or consumer tastes change, not that those things ever happen.
 
I think that the issue is that few people want a Ford car any more, Mustang excepted. They may, if gas prices keep rising, sell re-badged Mazdas or some other Japanese or Korean brand.
 
2k1Toaster said:
Yep, it's like they learned nothing from the 00's. As soon as all their big stupid SUVs are ready to sell, gas will spike as it always does and now they'll have nothing to compete. If only someone saw it coming... Again...

My first thought. And prices have already been going up. But it takes a lot of pain to give up the Family Truckster. In the meantime if people aren't buying sedans it doesn't make sense to keep producing them. The antidote is fuel economy standards -- the dreaded "Nanny State".
 
LeftieBiker said:
They may, if gas prices keep rising, sell re-badged Mazdas or some other Japanese or Korean brand.
Nah, that would never happen... /s
1990-ford-probe-automobile-model-years-photo-1
 
IIRC, the Probe was a third kind of animal. Not a re-badged Asian car, but one with Asian guts and a Ford body. (I drove two of those, actually, Mercury Tracers, and liked the Ford body.) I'm talking more about an Asian car with a slightly different nose.
 
Where I live I'm one of very few people that owns a car instead of an SUV or truck. In fact, there are only three of us around here that even own EV's and one is actually getting rid of hers. People just seem to be addicted to SUV's and crossovers. Which makes no sense to me. I've put chains on my little 1985 VW Golf and pulled SUV's out of snow banks, even a 4WD Ford Explorer. I've driven here for over twenty years, including 5 years as a commercial driver, and have never seen the need for owning a 4WD anything, much less an SUV or Pickup, with the exception of those that have long unmaintained driveways. My parents never did either. In fact, when I was young, all we had were RWD cars and we never had a problem even with those. All you need are good tires and to drive sensibly.

But I can't remember how many times I'm at a stoplight and have to take off a bit slow in my 2WD on an icy day when all of a sudden some guy in an AWD crossover or SUV gets impatient and has to find a way to pass me. And there have been times that up further ahead he's now stuck in the snowbank or rolled over in the ditch. On one terribly icy day more than 12 trucks, SUVs and crossovers passed me and every single one was off the road up further ahead.

But as far as Ford goes it sounds like they haven't been making very good small transmissions lately. Both they and Nissan haven't. So maybe it's a good thing their giving up on that.

I'm guessing that EV's will take off around here once they start making them into affordable SUV's.
 
IssacZachary said:
Where I live I'm one of very few people that owns a car instead of an SUV or truck. In fact, there are only three of us around here that even own EV's and one is actually getting rid of hers. People just seem to be addicted to SUV's and crossovers. Which makes no sense to me. I've put chains on my little 1985 VW Golf and pulled SUV's out of snow banks, even a 4WD Ford Explorer. I've driven here for over twenty years, including 5 years as a commercial driver, and have never seen the need for owning a 4WD anything, much less an SUV or Pickup, with the exception of those that have long unmaintained driveways. My parents never did either. In fact, when I was young, all we had were RWD cars and we never had a problem even with those. All you need are good tires and to drive sensibly.

But I can't remember how many times I'm at a stoplight and have to take off a bit slow in my 2WD on an icy day when all of a sudden some guy in an AWD crossover or SUV gets impatient and has to find a way to pass me. And there have been times that up further ahead he's now stuck in the snowbank or rolled over in the ditch. On one terribly icy day more than 12 trucks, SUVs and crossovers passed me and every single one was off the road up further ahead.

But as far as Ford goes it sounds like they haven't been making very good small transmissions lately. Both they and Nissan haven't. So maybe it's a good thing their giving up on that.

I'm guessing that EV's will take off around here once they start making them into affordable SUV's.

I always tell people that for most cases it comes down to driver skill. Having a 4WD car or BROD (Battering-Ram-Of-Death like SUV) just hides the lack of skill giving their drivers a false sense of security making the inevitable crash much worse.

I too in both my Prius and Leaf have passed numerous abandoned vehicles up my "hill", which is a 2k+ ft elevation gain with some tricky s-bends into the neighbourhood. I see cars slid off the road on the downhill side, and parked along the uphill side, usually with nice wheel-locked-sliding-backwards-oh-god-please-dont-hit-anything going right to where it is. Obviously spooked, they walk.

In my Prius I have pulled people up the hill with chains on. On one day where it was just a thin layer of ice, no chains, I was making it up just fine, passed a 4WD large SUV stuck. The guy was shoveling someones flower garden with his survival-toolkit-shovel and throwing it onto the road for traction. I offered to drive his car up the worst bit where he was stuck from my Prius window. He told me to f*-off and that now I was stuck for stopping. I just rolled up my window, started slowly, and voila, went up the hill.

If you know how to drive, you can drive anything anywhere.
 
Oh man! I think we just derailed this thread! But anyhow, here's another one.

When I was recently married my wife had never driven in the snow nor had ever driven a stick shift. All I had at the time was a 1993 Mazda 323 with a stick shift that I had bought for $250. (And the thing got 45mpg, no kidding!) Any how, that summer I showed her how to drive the thing. We lived down in a trailer park that was kind of down in a hole so to speak. After it snowed about a foot or more one day a 4WD extended cab Dodge Ram diesel was trying to get out of the trailer park up onto the main road. But with his oversized wheels he just couldn't make it. They just kept spinning and spinning, something I call the "sled effect". He must have been trying for at least 10 minutes or so until finally he backed up all the way to the very end of the whole trailer park and made a run for it down the whole length and finally made it up onto the road, almost going off the other side of course. Then my little wife who just learned how to drive a stick in a our little FWD Mazda, with good all season tires on, went right up to the stop sign at that road, stopped right on steepest part of the incline, and proceded to take off with hardly any wheel spin right onto the road with no problem on the first try.

I'm so proud of my wife!
 
Not sure past will be precedent here - future high gas prices may not substantially hurt Ford's scheme the next time around. Like Americans upsizing houses over the last few decades, I would bet this time is different and that SUVs and trucks are here to stay as a large percent of new vehicle sales.

Fuel expenditures represent less and less of of the average commuter budget over time. And with further hybridization and electrification, gasoline prices becomes less of an issue.

Once Americans get a taste of hauling around a beast of spaciousness and one-upping their fellow commuters for visibility, it’s hard to go back to sanity.
 
Most of what people are buying now aren't the monster truck frame SUVs, bit rather the crossovers, basically just tall cars. Many of the newer models aren't all that tall, look at the Honda hrv and Nissan rogue sport, not all that different from a LEAF.

If anything I'd add this changing consumer preference to the list of risks for Tesla, they are mostly selling cars in a world that is looking for a different form factor.
 
Looks like a good and effective way to cut ties with a ton of dealerships. Cleaning house might not be such a bad idea. All manufacturers seem to have rogue dealerships.

Simply offer a product line they can no longer solely survive on. Dealership likely merges with an existing dealership or closes altogether.
 
I read a while back an article by Car and Driver that was an eye opener. Generally speaking, a station wagon will cost less, have more room, be more efficient and perhaps even have more power than a crossover. A minivan will also cost less, have more passenger room and be more efficient than a full sized SUV. The thing of it is if you drive a minivan or station wagon you are considered a soccer mom or grandpa. But you're cool if you drive a crossover or SUV.

The problem with making electric SUVs and crossovers is that right now EV's are already expensive and by making them more expensive and less efficient will only hurt their already limited range or make them cost even more.
 
DaveinOlyWA said:
Looks like a good and effective way to cut ties with a ton of dealerships. Cleaning house might not be such a bad idea. All manufacturers seem to have rogue dealerships.

Simply offer a product line they can no longer solely survive on. Dealership likely merges with an existing dealership or closes altogether.

Most Ford sales are apparently CUVs/SUVs and trucks. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a Ford dealership that passed on selling those higher-profit vehicles in favor of lower margin cars.
 
IssacZachary said:
The problem with making electric SUVs and crossovers is that right now EV's are already expensive and by making them more expensive and less efficient will only hurt their already limited range or make them cost even more.

Agreed. But they could be great candidates for PHEV technology. Ford's Energi drive train was pretty good when introduced in 2013. If Ford upgraded the battery, the packaging, and fixed some quirks (make it more EV-centric and less Hybrid-centric), it would be a great fit in an SUV like an Escape or even an Explorer.
 
One more reason that I hope the Outlander PHEV is wildly successful. I know Ford teased an Escape Energi years ago. I wish they would make it already.
 
I know Ford teased an Escape Energi years ago. I wish they would make it already.

Well, they will have already built drivetrains and a production line to build more of them, but no more cars, so it should be a no-brainer for Ford to try offering an Escape Energi, at least in CARB states.
 
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