Thoughts anyone?

No problemo—by ages 11 and 14—-one of them will be able to use the front seat—one the back. Look—the Mustang is not a family truckster. But in a pinch—when I have to take the kids to school or another event when the family truckser is not available..it works out fine as a back-up. Hell—I even take it to lunch with work colleagues—-especially female ones as I like to see them contort themselves into and out of the back seat :)

“Wall St. values Ford at $2.00 and GM at $2.22. That doesn’t look like Ford is worth 4x GM to me, how ’bout you?”

Well, the market cap of GM is 1.36B, and F is 4.78 B, as you have forgotten to account for the number of shares issued. OK, that is not a factor of 4, quite, but is not far off.

If you want to play high finance, do the math.

@umterp85: If you don’t already know what means “growth spurt”, you will soon. Okeh, so your 6- and 9-year-old kids fit in the back of your Mustang. Grand. Now, how well d’you suppose your 11- and 14-year-old will fit?

@mach1: As I type this, Wall St. values Ford at $2.00 and GM at $2.22. That doesn’t look like Ford is worth 4x GM to me, how ’bout you?

@Double Z: I wonder if Ford’s new 5.0 will be measured in pretend litres like their last (4942cc, 4.9 L) “5.0″.

Ford keeps the Mustang laughably cheap because they AREN’T putting turbo fours with IRS and other crazy shit in it. Base price of about 20k minus any factory or dealer incentives and you’ll be able to pick one up for several thousand less than any other competitor. Adding IRS to the mix would likely make it too expensive for Ford to keep their cheapskate pricing.

@Umpterp

People bitch about the base 6 because it’s old and compared to newer v6’s is underpowered. Ford should put a better 6 in it. The 3 liter duratec would be a perfect choice now and they might be able to squeeze better mileage out of it too. That being said, with Mustang’s increasing weight advantage the old 4.0 isn’t as bad as people say it is. Now that even Civics are getting heavy as balls it should be able to hang with anything else similarly priced regardless of what the haters say.

My only nit is using the Mustang as your example. The Mustang is something Ford hasn’t f-d up. The Taurus F -up would have been a much better example—or the lack of good marketing against the Fusion. I know that would not have generated as many clickthroughs as a Mustang discussion…but just sayin.

Also—I continue to question those that bash the current gen Mustang V6.

Granted the engine is not state of the art—-but as a daily driver (most Mustangs are used this way)—210 horses + 240 lbs of torque (all available under 3800 RPM) mated to a 5 speed are more than adequate to have some fun. Also–my kids aged 6 and 9 fit fine in the back seat with no complaints. I will not “torture” my kids for the sake of fun! NOTE: If you want to improve your Mustang—there are thousands of ways to improve/customize aftermarket. Don’t complain–take action and have some fun with it !

Last—P71_CrownVic—your continued rant against anything / everything Ford continues to entertain—keep bringin it !

Yeah…because a $40K Mustang is the SAME thing as a $20K, V6 convert.

Who knew? Text amended. Thanks for keeping us honest.

Correct.
In addition, the Mazda3 is being assembled in Japan and then shipped here and still being competitively priced in its class.
The claim that the Euro/World Focus platform is so expensive to build, FoMoCo had no choice but to keep the 1999 underpinnings just to stay competitive is based on myths and baseless assumptions.
Also consider that Ford has spend so much money “redesigning” the American Focus, by many estimates it would actually be cheaper to adapt the European Model.

How about because it offers little real gain to the millions who have bought Mustangs? They should go out of their way to provide an IRS for the 30 or 40 car snobs that wouldn’t probably wouldn’t buy the Mustang for a dollar anyways? IRS fanatics didn’t show up in droves to buy the Cobras that had them.

Since SUVs primarily sold to soccer moms and other similar jack offs they needed to do whatever it took to make the car drive and ride real easy. In many aspects the SUV would benefit from a near indestructable LRA but some whore taking her kid to band camp wouldn’t buy it because it “rode too rough”.

This is a case of people just looking for a reason to complain about the Mustang, in reality the reasons one could complain about the Mustang are quite few and not related to lack of IRS. Most people who bitch about the Mustang don’t actually get what the car is about and generally ignore the relative decades long sales success it has been. Expect the Mustang to win in the sales race once again.

In regards to the sales failures of aussie imports, that’s down to product/marketing managers doing a bad job. Monaro as a GTO sorry, should have been a Chevy from the start, same as the Commodore as a Pontiac. Remember the Mercury Capri? A “sports” car being sold by a dealer chain that the target demographic was the nearly dead! It also brings up an interesting point about badge engineering. Would the Mercury Capri sold better as a Ford Capri, the commodore twins better as Chevy’s than Pontiac/Buick. Does the Badge really mean that much more? We tried the same over here Toyota Camry/Holden Apollo Ford Ute/Nissan Ute, Ford Holden Commodores/Toyota Lexan, Mazda 323/Ford Laser. In all but one example the clone car sold miserably when essentially the only difference was plastic badges and the dealer you went to. The exception was the Ford Laser, creamed the Mazda 323! No great attachment to the badge, only Ford/Holden loyalties involved.

I suppose that is why the SUVs have LRA…or why the Mustang has a solid front axle…oh wait.

This shows how backwards Ford is. They offer IRS on their big, lumbering, slow, piggish SUVs…but offer a ox cart suspension on their “sports” car.

Most cars have 4 tires…so here is a novel idea…why not treat them, you know, independently?

Then when you’re done with that look at how well Mustangs do in generally any race conditions even against cars with “superior” set ups.

When you’re done with that as well look at how Ford tried IRS in some recent Cobras that didn’t sell well and most owners ripped their IRS out.

Then consider how much simpler and stronger the LRA is and how all Ford should really do is offer LSD standard and quit bitching about it.

Does Ford really think that they can just make some plastic shiny, slap a brick nav screen in the center and call it ‘high end’?

http://www.blog.automotiveaddicts.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/2009fordfusionseldashboard01fixedsmall.jpg

Sorry but this:

http://photo.netcarshow.com/Honda-Accord_EX-L_V6_Sedan_2008_photo_30.jpg

is vastly superior to this:

http://photo.netcarshow.com/Ford-Fusion_2006_photo_2d.jpg

This. Even the stripped rental Fusions I’ve driven have interior materials on par with Accord and Camry.

“”Let me think, a Ford product that
1)must be a decent size (seats 4-5)
2)rwd
3)indpendant rear suspension
4)decent mileage
5)decent power”

Well, 4/5 for the Crown Vic a’int bad!

Actually, the last (current, seeing as the 2010s aren’t really on dealer lots yet) Fusion has an interior just as nice as any Camry or Accord (there is plenty of hard plastic in both of the Japanese cars, the Fusion actually has more soft touch material) which is also very stiff, and I don’t know where you are hearing these creaks and squeaks, but they aren’t coming from the car.

I will give you that the 4 cylinder isn’t the most refined engine, but the v6 at 18/26 is right in line with the other two at 18/28 and 19/29. Yes, a little less, and a little less power, but considering the 265hp MKZ gets 18/28 the new engines coming will solve both problems.

Next year the new 5.0L V8 will debut, and a new V6.

I’m not sure if its this year or next an IRS will be on option.

And with all of this improvement, it will still be cheaper than its competition.

And sorry for being new to the site but,

“Ford Death Watch” Hahahahahahahahahaha.

I think RF is so wrapped up in his wickedly accurate observations of GM that he fails to recognize that Ford is not the same as GM. Ford is not without problems, but they have been working on theirs for several years while GM was still in denial. Wall Street values F at 4 times the value of GM.

All that from a normally aspirated straight 6, never mind the turbo version. Starts @ US$24,327.00. Did somebody miss the boat when deciding product?

The only G6 us Yanks get is the one with an arrowhead at the front.

Interestingly, it was about that time that the original Capri (sold through Lincoln Mercury dealers) and the Toyota Celica debuted and sold very well. They appealed to many people who, 5-6 years earlier, would have bought a Mustang with the six or a mild-mannered V-8.

I liked my 67 383 Barracuda a lot better even though it had the weight distribution of a blackjack.

Been thinking about this all day while at work. Not only are you right RF, but you were right a couple days ago about the Vette. No chance of making the Vette appealing to secretaries (or affordable) so it should be put on hold.

Back to Mustang, wasn’t it about the time of the appearance of the Mach 1 when secretaries quit buying Mustangs? Didn’t they come back to it when Ford came up with the Mustang II? Is it time for Mustang II Redux? Ford needs something small that several million people will buy.