Ford To Shut Down Australian Manufacturing In 2016

"You are most certainly joking aren’t you? The Territory is horrible off road" Matter of degree. The Explorer makes the Territory CUV look like a Unimog.

"That said, I’ve always thought Ford should’ve kept JLR. They posess a global presence and appeal that Lincoln doesn’t and probably never will have." You are right about Lincoln, very few outside NA have heard of it.Ford did a stupid thing when it dropped the "basket cases" of Jaguar , Land Rover and Volvo. Freed of Ford management, all three have blossomed.

A couple of points, as there is lots of stuff here I agree with. The large car segment is shrinking hugely at the moment. It's not all about fuel use either, or the move to CUV's (even compact ones) and pickups would not be happening. I think a lot of it is the traditional "don't want to drive a boring car like my parents had", similar to the backlash against station wagons and then minivans in the US. At the same time the small or C-segment cars are now effectively the same or better size-wise as medium cars of 15-20 years ago, with better performance and refinement, and meet most people's actual needs. A large car that is a struggle to slot into crowded carparks becomes a hassle. Ford is far from innocent here, in its decline from having the best-selling car on the market 16 years ago. The AU Falcon came out a year after the VT Commodore aged the EL overnight, and it was an ill-considered design direction. This was repeated with the FG lagging behind the VE Commodore by 18 months. They had problems bringing the new LPG system to market, I gather a lot of it was outside Ford's control but it lead to a gap in product availability of over a year - leading to not only a loss of sales but surely a change of customer buying habits due to the forced change. The diesel Territory was cancelled only to be revived later and coming to market perhaps 3 years after it needed to - thousands more lost sales. They have also withdrawn from quite a few different parts of the market such as the LWB luxury variant, a segment Ford created in 1967, and the station wagon - which ran the same basic rear inner structure for over 20 years. Both of these cars were caught in a spiral of smaller development investment leading to fewer sales, sure in the end there was only one decision to make, but Holden has shown there is an alternative and when you are at the numbers they sell now every bit helps. I also wonder how many people have been put off buying a Ford by what is nearing a decade of "Ford closing down any minute now" reporting. This has not been helped by a lack of clear demonstrable statements to the contrary for the most part, even now they are evasive about what the future holds. What conclusion must you draw in such a situation? Lastly Nissan has stopped building cars in Australia, but they do still have a manufacturing presence here in cast aluminium components.

Whatever the decision of Ford that they will not produce car in Australia , It's their choice. If they are not happy with their production in happy then Ford can produce their car in another country , but Australian market is very good opportunity for ford to be in Race of all car manufactures. For ford it will be difficult to supply cars on time if they will not produce cars in Australia .