Autoblog

After spending a few days with Ford's main-marketing-man Jim Farley and his team, we can truly say that the excitement surrounding the company's new Drive One marketing strategy is palpable. They believe that the story they have to tell is rather compelling; the real struggle will be convincing car-buyers that their vehicles are every bit as good as their competition from Japan -- as recent studies indicate. To show people what's going on behind the scenes, Farley and his posse brought Ford's best and brightest engineers with them to Las Vegas to introduce their dealer-base to the new campaign. They let us tag along so we could see what all the fuss is about, and the dealers we spoke to seemed pretty pumped about Drive One and felt that Farley's new team at Ford was finally listening to them and doing something with their input. Keep reading to find out what else we heard in Sin City.

The Bloomfield Hills, Michigan-based RDA Group has found that Ford is on par with top-level stalwarts Toyota and Honda when it comes to vehicle quality. Ford managed 1,284 "things-gone-wrong" (TGW) per 1,000 vehicles during the first three months of ownership this year, statistically matching the two top Japanese brands, which are tied at 1,250 TGW. Though it certianly won't be the last word in the ongoing debate as to who makes the best cars, it is at least a good sign for Ford. Perhaps what's most impressive is that 36 of 40 Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Volvo and Mazda nameplates improved this year versus 2007. Ford's performance in this study marks an eight-percent improvement over the previous year, at which time they were tied with Toyota, but trailing industry-leader Honda. While Ford is glad to see quality improving, every automaker would surely like to sit alone at the top of the quality rankings, and Ford is no different.

Ford builds some pretty good vehicles these days, but faces a large perceived quality gap, as only 41-percent of consumers consider Ford vehicles according to their own internal data. For that reason, expect Ford to tout these new quality findings as part of their Drive One campaign.

[Source: Ford]