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Automotive News & Views Is Ford's End Right Behind Chrysler's?
180 messages, Last post on Nov 08, 2007 at 7:04 PM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
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Replying to: john_324 (Jun 06, 2007 7:36 am) Great point, but they are going about it all wrong. Take the Fusion ads, for example. They have Car and Driver and Road and Track ads saying that consumers are liking it over the Accord and Camry. J.D. Powers also ranked it higher. But the strategy of going after the Accord and Camry buyers is insane. Toyota and Honda demand the most loyalty out of any manufacturer. They usually only trade their customers for one another. Very few defect to domestic brands. Ford should have used these results as a side note and appealed to the other buyers. They were going after 1 & 2 when they're sitting at 9th! Go after 3-8, move up, develop some credibility, then make a move after the big fish. But now, the buy-American-only generation is dying if not dead as a market force... Check this out, says the same thing -- Buy American Maybe part of Ford's strategic re-think will be realizing that the real middle market these days is willing to shell out decent money for a quality car. If I had Mullaly's ear, I would tell him that the best thing that Ford could do to really get back into the game is to scratch profits from Ford Motor Credit for 12-18 months and put out finance incentives (not cash back, which would hurt the brand and used car values) to attract a new batch of buyers. There are first time buyers programs and college grad programs, but Fords aren't well publicized, nor are they very good. Sell more cars by offering something nobody else does. And I mean WAY more than anyone else does. When GM had Employee Pricing, everyone else did soon after. When Ford came out with 0% for 72 months, everyone else did within a week. Ford, be agressive, stop selling us on quality (for now) and start giving us a reason to buy a Ford that NOBODY else can offer.">link title
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Replying to: usedcarsonly (Jun 11, 2007 8:30 am) There is something to be said for going into a fight picking the biggest, baddest, meanest guy in the group and kicking him right in the teeth. |
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Today's rumors say that Jag and Land Rover are on the block and that Ford has hired Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to help The story also says that a sale of Volvo isn't being explored (at least with this process), just the luxury brands. |
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on the block makes sense. As a package, though, the only company that I think would be interested would be Hyundai, and they seem to think that developing a luxury model and perhaps a luxury brand in house is cheaper than buying the problems and red ink associated with Jag/Land Rover. Keeping Volvo makes sense; it's making money, and Ford has access to Volvo's safety technology. |
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They're chasing after the Accord and Camry, but so is the Saturn Aura. And what will happen next year when there is a new Accord on the market and people think that the Accord is worlds ahead? The same happened with the Sonata and Camry. People thought the Sonata would give the Camry a run for it's money until the new 07 models came out, and then the Camry became the front runner. I think Saturn and Ford have a better shot at going after the Koreans (Sonata, Optima) and maybe the Altima. The Camry/Accord just have too many loyal buyers, and a new Accord is in the works.
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Replying to: jchan2 (Jun 11, 2007 9:31 am) When you're 9th on the edmunds list, you don't push yourself as better than #1 and #2. First, beat the competition just ahead of you, climb the ladder, build momentum, then go after the top dogs. |
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| I still figure Ford would do well to kill Mercury, which has no unique models, and replace it with Volvo. It would give the folks that are now Lincoln Mercury dealers some real different product and they'd only have to buy off a few Volvo dealers in the process. Not like when GM killed Oldsmobile and had to pay off all the Olds dealers - there were lots more of them! | |
I appreciate the thought, but this isn't the prison yard (unless you work for Ford  ). Fusion doesn't have the rocks to punch the leaders in the teeth. Nor does Ford. Hyundai and the Domestics are in a similar boat. Build credibility first. Make sure your sold customers know you have a hot new product that is competitive. If you sell for Ford, send mailers to your Explorer, F-150, and Expedition customers promoting the new Fusion and re-introduced Taurus. Give your customer base reason to stick around. The easiest sale to make is to your sold customers. Ford has a nice size base. Start building at home. Hyundai has a tougher road, theoretically. Throwing high and tight to Albert Pujols may not be the best career move. Anyone want to be Brad Lidge? And the Ford ads clearly call the Fusion AWD, and sports sedan, and more fun to drive than Accord/Camry. Maybe it should target Altima, if that's there angle? Ford searching for traction, can't fault them on that. Smaller, slower prey would be wise for now.  DrFill |
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Automotive News is reporting that all three brands, including Volvo, are for sale. And that Fiat was very close to buying Jag and LR, then broke off at the last minute. http://www.autonews.com/ Dump the whole crowd, dump Mercury, and just fix Ford and Lincoln. That should be their plan. They will need the money from the sale, every penny, just to fix those two brands. Word is now that the Ranger will likely go in the dumper after next year, no replacement planned, as they apparently need to build 100K per year just to break even. Sheesh. What is going on over there? How can they be so much worse off than GM?
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Replying to: nippononly (Jun 11, 2007 7:12 pm) Mazda makes a compact pickup. They can just Americanize it.
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