Posted on 06/09/2006 12:05:53 PM PDT by Responsibility2nd
In May, an otherwise dismal month for Detroit, Ford Motor Co. (F ) sold more than 20,000 Focus subcompacts, the fuel sipper's best showing in nine months. That's great news, right? Not really. Ford lost an estimated $4,000 to $5,000 on each Focus it sold.
What irony. Just when the subcompact market is heating up, Ford can't make money on a car acclaimed for its taut handling and decent 26/32-mpg fuel economy. The auto maker's Focus problem (pun intended) is an object lesson in how Ford continues to be hamstrung by high labor costs and tired product design. By choosing not to remake the Focus for the U.S. when it had the chance, Ford misread the road ahead. Now the auto maker is working overtime to bolster the Focus, albeit not until 2008, with a face-lift plus three new small cars.
When it hit the U.S. in 2000, the Focus was widely applauded. Car & Driver magazine named Ford's zippy subcompact to its influential "Ten Best" list four years running. But by 2003 the Focus had suffered more than 12 recalls. And when Ford redesigned it in 2004, the new Focus appeared only in Europe, where Dearborn felt it could fetch a decent price. Meanwhile, the U.S. version received just cosmetic upgrades.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessweek.com ...
>>>Yeah that 86 Chevy Truck paint failure
I had it happen on a Celebrity station wagon.>>>
Ours was a Chevy Cavalier, but 1989.
I was referring to the credibility of the writer, not Ford.
"Looking for a Big 3 Bashing Thread? Here it is."
It's not like they haven't earned it.
Come on. Toyota and Wal-Mart get bashed around here more than the Big three.
"My XA gets better mileage... Na na na na na na!"
Well, my 2003 Dodge Ram 1500 gets 18 mpg on the highway with a full load of Horse hay. Why do so many of you freepers drive those little lib cars?
You're right these Big Three US auto manuafacturers have it coming. Sorry, but i wouldn't buy a BIG THREE american car ever again...They design and make junk and it's not the worker's fault.
Caterpillar...dealt straight on with labor costs and quality and now they're profitable beyond their wildest dreams.
This shows once again that problems at these companies HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH LABOR...these are management controlled problems. The problem is with management.
Why is that? The Porsche Cayman get 23 mpg city/32 mpg highway as compared to the Focus at 26 city/32 highway. You were saying ...
> LOL! Trust me, if your windshield wipers lasted five years then you had an amazing set of windshield wipers.
This is the kind of person who brings in a car five years later with engine problems because the oil has never been changed from the time it came off the dealer lot.
I see an awful lot of drivers of them that appear that way; many with two men in the car headed up I-575 on the weekends to north Georgia. However, I also see many cute women driving them too.
The other thing the article points to, that Ford and GM have been doing for my entire adult life, is seldom really upgrading their least expensive models, for little cost, other than cosemtically.
Toyota has had an opposite philosophy for years. When the return on investment of a feature in a "high-end" model has been achieved, Toyota starts moving the results, the technological results, of that investment (already paid off, and already profited on) down to lower-end models.
That process has made the Toyota Corolla nearly the best "economy" car for its money; and it is full of engine, drive-train, electronics, suspension and "creature" features that started, in the Cressida, the Avalon and the Camry.
I have felt for years that Toyota was a company that prodcued cars and wanted to produce cars, while GM in particular was more simply a marketer of cars that it produced. To me the difference between the focus of GM and Toyota has been like GM has the same short-term sensationalist view of things as the LameStreamMedia and Toyota is trying to do a better job at building cars, counting on their good work as what will sell their cars, regardless of immediate popular trends.
My wife's Lexus gets that and it's at least 1/2 of what I consider a car, the Focus is a Tonka Toy.
Your wife's Lexus sells for five times what the Focus does.
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I owned a 92 Crown Victoria that got 26 to 28 highway and better than 20 in city driving and it was supremely comvortable. I have a 96 Crown police interceptor that is much faster on the takeoff than the 92 Crown due to a lower rear end ratio but it still does around 20 in town and 23 or 24 on the highway. We had cars thirty years ago that got better mileage than quoted for the Focus. In fact my older brother had a 1952 Mercury that would do 22 on the highway.
As I said, if you want better mileage for the same price you need to sacrifice emissions, weight, power, or build quality. Cars of 30 years ago have much higher levels of emissions. I remember when you could increase your mileage and horsepower both simply by pulling off all your vacuum hoses, but you would then fail the emissions test. I think you just proved my point about that by claiming that 30 years ago cars got better mileage than today's restricted-emissions cars.
Concur, and I just wish they made cars that were a little more geared for the driving enthusiast. I really need to look into what TRD add-ons they have for, say, the IS350.
We are cheap bastards. I spend my extra money on antique Harleys.
You are no doubt right about the emissions, what amazes me is that so many seem to deny the existence of the better mileage in the past. Ford once marketed an F-150 full-size pickup that was EPA rated at 29 miles per gallon highway, I spoke with more than one owner who confirmed figures as high as 27 miles per gallon and yet I cannot find anyone on a Ford lot now who seems willing to admit that such a vehicle ever existed.
I had a 1989 Jeep with metallic blue paint. By 1994 the paint had flaked so much that the hood was practically bare metal. And the message from Chrysler was the same, Tough S**t for you.
I've never bought a Chrysler product since then, and I never will. If a rental car company tries to give me one, I ask for another and tell them why.
-ccm
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