Don't Look Now, but Ford's Selling Some Stuff
May 15, 2008
By Bill Visnic
DEARBORN, Mich. -- To paraphrase Jim Morrison and The Doors, Ford's been down so long that it looks like up to them.
But within the cloud that has been Ford's long-declining market share - and its shared pain with the other domestic automakers who drank too long at the well of fullsize pickups and SUVs - there's a portion of silver lining: Ford is quietly making moves in some important and competitive market segments. In some cases, with product that ain't exactly new.
Engineers and marketers for the company's reworked '09 Escape compact crossover, which goes on sale July 2 and was unveiled to the media this week, are more than a little pleased with the Escape's sales performance in what currently is one of the market's most cutthroat segments.
Through April, Escape sales are up 9.6 percent and the mini-ute is tracking to sell a plump 180,000 units this year, versus 165,596 last year. Not bad for a vehicle that is far from the freshest in the segment, being that it still is riding on what essentially is the platform it launched with in 2001.
Sales of Ford's nearly-new Edge crossover, according to Edmunds.com, also are up a robust
37.9 percent for the year in yet another highly competitive segment that is snagging buyers seeking more fuel-efficient alternatives to traditional SUVs. Edge is on pace to sell nearly 140,000 units this year against strong competitors such as the Nissan Murano (essentially new for '09), General Motors Corp.'s new GMC Acadia, Saturn Outlook and Buick Enclave, not to mention the Toyota Highlander.
And Ford's most improbable story may be the wizened Focus compact car. A low price, good fuel economy and the availability of the youth-baiting Sync in-car connectivity system has pumped new life into the Focus: sales were up 43.5 percent last month and 29.1 percent for the year. If this is what Ford - and Sync - can do with a car that has been on the same platform for nearly a decade, who's to say how Ford can perform when it finally unleashes its all-new Fiesta B-segment car next year and an eventual modern replacement for the Focus itself, a car Europe already enjoys?
These promising achievements are tempered, of course, by still-frightening fallout in the pickup and traditional SUV markets. Ford's stalwart Explorer is off 25 percent through April and is fast becoming one of the company's let's-just-forget-it former superstars, while the F-Series pickup, traditionally the best-selling vehicle of any kind, is unlikely to much longer retain its impregnable reputation, irrespective of a heavily revised replacement coming this fall.
Nonetheless, Ford is making headway against heavy competition in segments that matter now, and the surprising success of long-mature models such as the Focus and Escape may be a signal the latest revamp of its product-development process is capable of delivering even more formidable accomplishments with the truly new products just around the corner.
Posted by Michelle Krebs at 4:44 AM under Analysis , Featured , Ford | Comments (1) | digg this | Seed Newsvine
You omitted one of Ford's even more improbable success stories, the Ranger. Sales have increased nearly every month and is there another older product with fewer updates than the Ranger? It's too bad Ford is closing the Ranger plant and no public plans to replace the Ranger with anything in the compact trucks segment.
Posted by: moparbad | May 15, 2008 at 9:56 AM