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Originally Posted by GoodnClean Sales is all about overcoming objections, and Ford has a LOT of them to overcome. So far they've sucked at it. Thier transformation is going to be hard and difficult but not impossible.
Step one is going to be no more shared vehicles with Ford. Platforms are fine, but the cars are too obviously related (the Fusion and the Zephyr use the same steering wheel for God's sake). That helps one objection.
Step two is to cancel the Town Car. Yes its a risk, but sometimes you have to give up on your weak base to go after a stronger new consumer. You will never be able to sell cars to BMW owners next to a Town Car. Look at Cadillac? They got rid of all their old names INCLUDING the Deville. They slapped a art and science front and rear end on the thing and called it the "DTS" and all of a sudden 40 year olds aren't so scared to buy STS'. Ford could do the same thing to the Town Car and save some of their base. I went to the Washington Auto Show, Lincoln had all their cool new concepts there. What was on the side of the display? A hilariously ugly blue Town Car with wire wheels, vogue tires and a blue vinyl top with gold emblems. How stupid was that? Why even have that car there? No one was paying attention to the new concepts (which are fantastic) they were laughing at the Town Car! "Lincolns are so ugly" is what I heard from people.
All of the money spent on the car show wasted. Whoever designed the display should be fired.
Step three is to make stand alone Lincoln dealers and completely cancel the Mercury brand. Selling Lincolns next to Mercuries is self defeating. Sell them next to Jags if you must.
Step four is to price them properly and NOT GIVE ANY REBATES.
Thats a recipie for success. |
Town Car is probably gone as of next summer. Some have said it's moving from Wixom Assembly, in Detroit, to St. Thomas Assembly in Ontario,where the Crown Vic is being made, but St. Thomas is going down to one shift, to make those body-on-frame cars for the fleet and livery business only, so I think TC is history.
Zephyr shares too much sheet metal with the Fusion - I agree. But steering wheels (or instrument panel & console, for that mater) - I think not.
Zephyr:
Fusion:
Not the same wheel, and it's not trim differences either. Look related? That's in the eye of the beholder. But the same wheel? No. Diameter is different, and the cruise-control/stereo switches are completely different - we made the prototype brackets for both, and I can tell yo - they're completely different size and shape.
Ford can't cancel Mercury. Even with minor differences between the Ford Escape and the Mercury Mariner, and the Ford Fusion and the Mercury Milan, Mercury is bringing in a completely different buyer than the Ford dealers (and Ford claims the Mercury buyers have more import conquests than Ford sales do), plus Lincoln dealerships can't for the most part stand alone with Mercury's sales volume. GM ended up losing more business from axing Oldsmobile than the elimination of the brand saved them in costs. One thing you guys aren't aware of is the all fifty states have strong franchise laws that benefit the dealers, not the auto companies (Detroit, Japanese, or European). GM got nailed with so many lawsuits from canceling Oldsmobile that they have been seriously regretting it for the last three years. Your opinions, as with mine, as car enthusiasts are irrelevant. All fifty states courts nailed GM's butt to the wall over canceling Olds. Chrysler faired a bit better dumping Plymouth, because they slapped the Chrysler name on the low end Plymouth products and the Chrysler-Plymouth-Jeep dealers had no real loses to claim in court.
What Ford needs to do is a better job of differentiating Mercury from Ford. Mercury is to Ford what Buick is to GM - a supposed aspirational stepping stone from Ford to Lincoln, in the way Buick is supposed to be from Chevrolet to Cadillac. Mercury's average buyers age dropped almost a whole decade with the Montego, and the Milan and Mariner dropped it even further while raising the average aggregate education level of the the customer base.
I agree that having such a garish POS at the Washington DC Auto Show is a mistake - blame the dealers association, not Ford. Again, the state franchise laws give the dealers a lot of latitude, and the automakers have little control. I'll give you two examples, two Detroit automakers, and the same problem. For Ford, it was the 1999 LS, and for Chrysler it was the mid 1990's LHS. Neither automaker wanted their dealers to display, or even sell, any with an aftermarket vinyl top (YUCK...Major YUCK) on them. Ford had the dealers sign a sales agreement agreeing not to do so. Most dealers did anyway, and when Ford threatened to withhold their allocation of LS's, Ford got taken to court...and lost. Restriction was thrown out in every case that went to court, regardless of state jurisdiction, on the grounds that the franchise laws didn't allow such an addenum. At Chrysler, design chief Trevor Creed threaten factiously to send company designers out with box cutters to remove the tops - Chrysler dealers were so incensed, some of them withheld monthly vehicle orders just to screw with Chrysler's production schedule. Trevor Creed had to issue a public apology.
I still see a few Chrysler 300's with fake carriage tops. I never see a Lexus with one (so far). Any bet on whether Chrysler would like to stop their dealers from selling the damn things? Different customer bases, and the dealers are going to do what they want to do,regardless. Look Honda/Acura zone managers asked Acura dealers not to display Acura's with Stongard or Xpel on the hoods and front ends, because it sends the message that the cars might not be sturdy enough to hold up to road debris. I know two different Acura dealers in this area who display them any way - guy who does the installation is the same guy who installed Xpel on my car. Honda cannot, under the franchise laws, stop them.