Ford expects U.S. shift to smaller cars to last for years
Ford Motor has seen the future, and it's dominated by crossovers and small cars, according to the company's sales analyst George Pipas. Crossover sales are expected to hit 2.4 million units this year, and pass the 3 million mark by 2010.Pipas expects crossovers and small cars to dominate the market by the end of the decade, with crossovers, a big hit with baby boomers, likely to grab a narrow lead.
While Ford is well-positioned in the crossover market with its new Edge, its small car situation is pretty grim, with the venerable Focus carrying the flag while the company thrashes to come up with a competitive new subcompact model, not expected to hit the U.S. market until at least 2009.
[Source: Reuters]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
JB 6:59AM (10/18/2006)
Duh!
How much money did Ford spend to figure that out? Probably enough to develop one or two small cars, or convert some that it sells elsewhere to sell here.
Why do they even announce this stuff? It just makes Ford seem clueless.
The only funnier release would be "Ford predicts gas to become free by the year 2012".
Give me a break.
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Corey W. 8:24AM (10/18/2006)
The trend was obvious, not sure why some of the domestics was late to the game on this.
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M. 7:29AM (10/18/2006)
Funny. Here in Europe they have the Focus, the C-Max, the Aveo-sized Fiesta and its Brasilian sibling, the Fusion. All of them are available with economical Ford gas and even more economical PSA Diesel engines.
Ford Europe actually makes net profits. I really do not understand why they refuse to sell the European Focus, C-Max and S-Max to US customers.
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Bob-o 7:49AM (10/18/2006)
Unions.
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M. 7:58AM (10/18/2006)
Yeah! Blame the Unions for a bad range of products...
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noub 8:02AM (10/18/2006)
hey gays,
another good news about ford is at the following URL :
http://www.moniteurautomobile.be/Magazines_ArticlesDetail.cfm?xArticleID=8435
unfortunatly, it's in french but I can resume the article by Ford begin to think to sell the new Mondeo, the S-MAX et the galaxy in US.
I am sure that this news will be soon translated on another topic on this site.
To do this, the only belgium genk factory will not be enough so Ford needs find another factory to produce this cars. Why not directly in north america !!!
For small cars, US will just needs to wait for the next generation of european model ! that means 2009.
If US consumers are not happy (I can understand it, only the old focus is there), I make sense to me on a economical side (the current development cost will be shared but Ford NA and Ford Europe). The other thing that makes sense to me is the fact that I am sure that Ford will come up with good cars. The current european fiesta is at the end of its life-cycle.
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Harrison 11:05AM (10/18/2006)
GM and Chrysler have plenty of small cars available and on the way. Ford missed the boat again and for some reason enjoys looking stupid with revelations like "Ford expects U.S. shift to smaller cars to last for years". BIG TIME DUH
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Howard Kerr 8:22AM (10/18/2006)
If it's any consolation to the "bigwigs" at Ford, if I had to choose between the older Focus and the "brand spanking new" Cobalt or something from DCX's growing stable of small cars/mock SUVs...I'd go with the Focus. Unfortunately, as a current Honda owner, I'm more apt to go with a new Civic or Fit for my next new car.
In the early 80s I owned a European Ford Fiesta and thought it was a pretty decent car. American Ford's not quite a replacement, the American version of the Escort, didn't appeal to me at all. I want a REAL Euro Ford. Why can't the Blue Oval just let it's British/German/Japanese arm design a vehicle for the U.S.? These folks know how to build appealing small cars (with the exception of the Euro Fusion), dump this attitude of only Americans know ALL there is to know about American car drivers/buyers. It obviously hasn't worked so far.
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Hamud 8:28AM (10/18/2006)
That was pretty obvious eh?
The funniest is that they have the small cars they need, no necessity of building new ones, just get across the ocean and get them.
noub, thanks for the tip. Big good news endeed.
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tariq 4:46AM (10/19/2006)
the only way gm and ford can compete is by making small cars. i understood this a long time ago. Gm understood this recently, ford has yet to understand.
its not just the share of the market tht small cars hav, theres a lot more to it:
small cars are sold in the developing markets more than large ones. these markets(china and india specially) are growing, and wen ppl there get richer there, they buy luxury cars.
Another reason small cars are important is tht a person like me would start from a yaris, then corolla, followed by a camry and then finally wen im 50 yrs old, a lexus.
does ford or gm hav such a comprehensive lineup? only recently. so think of a small car and u usually think toyota, honda, suzuki or daihatsu etc. atleast in the developing countries.
its not just the share of small cars of the total market
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Hamud 9:07AM (10/18/2006)
The main problem i see in small cars is that the profits of their sales are smaller than the profits from the sales of bigger cars. We see this clearly here in Brazil. Another issue is that along with the decrease in size comes the decrease in quality, hope it won't happen in the States, but it happened here.
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Darko Biljan, Canada 3:35PM (10/20/2006)
I cannot believe that it is so hard to get Ford's European models here (Ford Fiesta, Focus CMax, even Mondeo looks much better than anything offered here). I came from Europe in 1995 and I could not believe the ugliness of most of the cars. I was also shocked by the obsession of both Americans and Canadians by sedans (the least user friendly and practical design). However, people here finally start to smart up. They realized that station wagons and hatchbacks are much more practical for every day use. And SUVs? They are just taller and thirstier station wagons (with same or smaller cargo space).
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goat 10:07AM (10/18/2006)
I think Ford is all wet. To the degree people stop buying SUVs, they will buy mid- and full-size cars.
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Stoneman 11:10AM (10/18/2006)
Well, after that nutcase Kimmie in North Korea threatening to launch cows at his neighbors, gas prices are going to go through the roof again.
Stoneman
http://www.stonemanautoreview.com
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foxrun 2:28PM (10/18/2006)
Ford is not geared in N.A. to make small cars in volume, but they are planning on it plus they have been building smaller SUV's for a while, how is the Escape? plus just look at the EDGE, that one is set to go big time.
Can't say anything about unions either because Ford europe is doing really good and thier unions look like the Kremlin compared to the UAW.
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Bob-o 12:08PM (10/18/2006)
"Yeah! Blame the Unions for a bad range of products..."
I thought it was pretty obvious. If they were to import these models, they wouldn't be able to sell the poor-excuse-for-a-car they build here. Retooling wouldn't work, because remember what happened to the Focus? It went from the most reliable, best selling car in Europe, to the least reliable, biggest POS ever when the domestic factories were given the task to build it. So without Ford willing to retool to build here, there's no way a domestic automaker would be able to import anything without the unions jumping down their throats. The GTO is the one of the few domestically sold cars that is built overseas, and that's a specialty car. Imagine trying to tell the unions that you're gonna import a car that will represent 10%+ of their domestic sales...
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carnut 12:52PM (10/18/2006)
Who wants these small cars? I have seen probably 5 total of Fits, Yaris's and Versas on the road. A handful of Aveos. Toyota and Honda are sold out of their cars, but that's easy to do - build few of them and then they look like a hot seller when they are sold out everywhere. It's a trick that goes on all the time in every industry.
Who is demanding these small cars? I sure as heck wouldn't want to cram the wife, dog and a kid into a Yaris or a Fit and then expect to have a comfortable drive anywhere. Not to mention having any passing power going up the hills around here in the NE part of the USA. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. The only thing that made the drive bearable was the car - 80's Escort was a hatch (decent room) and had a stick.
Yes, small car sales will be a porton of sales, but I don't see people here in the USA Demanding them.
What we want is a medium-large car/SUV that gets decent gas mileage. I personally think crossovers will be the next hot market - the space of an SUV with the efficiency of a car.
Maybe as a commuter car a small car makes sense, but for those uf who live in suburban areas and have families, mid-large cars + SUV's are what we need. Fuel efficiency is what we demand.
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9394 2:18PM (10/18/2006)
Toyota Yaris sale in August: 11,392
I'd not consider this number to be "few".
BTW, this is more than any model Buick sold in the month.
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Mad Detroiter 1:57AM (10/19/2006)
good thing FoMoCo is so prepared... oh wait, they're only prepared in Europe...
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Andy 4:13PM (10/18/2006)
Uh...duh? Of course people are going to start moving to smaller cars. I hope that means Ford will stop pumping out 900,000 discounted F-150s every year.
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