Personally my money is on Ford to be the one of the 2.8 which comes out of the current crisis in the best shape. Chrysler gets my vote for Most Likely To Fold It’s Tent First.

Ford was a profitable company for many years with trucks at 25% of their sales, they simply need to relearn how to do it.

The Focus and Fusion are certainly on the right track. Now they need to get the Taurus in the sales hunt and they will have a strong offering of small, medium and large cars. The next step is to bring back coupe, hatchback and wagon variants where possible. Put the new ecoboost technologies to work and Ford will have a very strong model lineup.

The F150 can go back on a 10-15 year platform refresh cycle with the occasional trim changes to distinguish model years.

The Transit Connect project looks like a good platform to move into the more efficient commercial vehicle market.

The lucky thing for Ford is that they have the platforms and technologies in Europe and Japan to meet the needs and desires of a fuel cost conscious customer. Ford also has a rational US brand lineup because the Mercury products are just a nose and trim job. Ditch Volvo, fix Lincoln and keep Mercury as a high level trim option built off Ford platforms. Lincoln also needs to run on Ford platforms as most of it’s vehicles have for many, many decades. Load ‘em up with comfort and glitz, but keep the platforms common.

GM is much, much further away from having a rational approach to brands than Ford is.

Exactly. Far too early to be jumping to any conclusions as of yet.

Don’t forget the high depreciation.

FYI, the Corolla is built in the USA too.

limmin:
Lotsa people will be joining the Ford family, and staying for life.

I highly doubt that. A lot of people are being attracted to the Focus by gimmicks. People are interested in the Focus because of the SYNC bandwagon. Once SYNC is no longer exclusive, or once competitors unveil their own SYNC-like systems, people will jump off the bandwagon and Focus sales will decrease.

Gimmicks only help sales in the short term. In the long term, and especially in such troubled economic times, people will focus a lot of whether it’s an inherently good car, which the Focus is not. Apart from SYNC and fuel economy, there’s nothing inherently “good” about the Focus. The Mazda 3 is the most fun/best-handling in the class, the Corolla has a huge reputation and is the most refined/comfortable in the class, and the Civic is a swiss army knife sort of car that does everything quite well.

Wow.

Argument defeated.

Ford, just bring us the Euro Focus, this is stupid. You should have this one and that one at the same time. Just rebadge Mazda 3’s or something.

Although I might buy an A3 on Friday. For 2x a Focus.

No euro focus as mentioned 1,000 times before, its too expensive for US. Who would buy a $30,000 focus in US. I.e. who would buy a $30,000 Subaru? Well maybe Ford could use a halo car that is euro-based along with pony car but it wont be $19k.

http://www.ford.co.uk/spg/getImage.asp?imageName=SPG_3_28_0_35389.jpg&filename=lrggal_Ranger2.jpg

They can’t bring in the Euro Focus because they spent so much on this redesign: I believe around $10 billion dollars or some outrageous number; they at least have to make some money off of that development time before they kill it off. As soon as they can I’ll bet Ford is going to start the new Focus off in the U.S.

I see a lot of people on this and other sites getting angry at Ford for not bringing the Euro model over, but for what it’s worth, I like the U.S. model too. Saw it at our local Ford dealer, seemed like a sturdy little car, if not the best little car I’ve ever seen. Interior is more conventional than the Honda’s and I think it looks better in person too.

The Focus will sell because Americans would rather have an ugly-but-unique car than one that just “blends in”. The Corolla is bland and normal-looking, the Honda is similarly bland, and I’d have to argue even the Mazda3 is somewhat normal, boring fare. The Focus is bland but unusual with the two-bar grille and headlights, which is part of why Americans are buying it, in my opinion. And, this car also tends to get more positive looks than many other ugly cars like the redesigned Scion xB.

Even when they bring over the Euro Focus, I’ll bet it’s going to look very different from the European model to stand it out from the crowd here. I hope it comes over in several bodystyles, including hatchbacks, wagons, sedans and coupes. And I think it might work if they made it AWD too and used it for the Escape’s platform. Good luck on the new Focus Ford.

March sales:

Cobalt: 13,756 (plus 1,546 G5s and 3,693 Aveos)
Caliber: 9,509 (plus 5,305 PT Cruisers)

So, when comparing with the rest of Detroit, Ford’s doing great. When comparing with Japan’s Big Two…not so much.

But Ford’s current problem is falling sales of F-150s, Expeditions, and Explorers, which is where the money is for them, not in the Focus. Detroit has already lost to the imports in pretty much every category of car, and the slight uptick here is not reversing that. They are also losing in the minivan, small pickup, and small SUV categories. The bigger pickups and SUVs is their last stand.

March sales:

Focus: 21,168
Corolla: 25,109 (plus 12,953 Yarises and 2,518 Scion xDs)
Civic: 32,740 (plus 6,835 Fits)

Of course, it probably has nothing to do with the actual car itself and rather the 5 LED that change color and the ability to talk to your radio. Gimmicks sell…but I would MUCH rather have a Cobalt. Less gimmicks and more MPG.

Per Ford’s sales call in March, the Focus is bringing in $2,000 more per transaction than the car it replaces. The costs of manufacturing have also decreased – so my guess is the equation is now much closer to break-even than not.

I will say this one last time, the difference in dynamics between this car and the C1 is not detectable by 95% of drivers. The C1 was an evolution on the C170 much as this C170-2 is an evolution on the original platform – and it has been significantly updated (it’s a 1-yo platform based on a 9-yo original design – much like how Toyota and Honda design cars!). The SES version is probably even harder to distinguish for most from the Mazda3. What is noticeable is the top hat and interior design – which frankly is not nearly as elegant as its cousing across the pond, but neither of those is tied to the platform – that’s all the designers.

Honestly, most Americans don’t have taste and the ones that do don’t usually shop for $25k compact Fords – they shop for Minis, 3-series, A4s, ISs, etc. What this Focus will help is raising Ford’s small car standard a bit (mostly through SYNC). Ford needed to have a higher transaction price on its vehicle to bring the C1-2 here in 2010, and now they have it. And we enthusiasts will get our C1-2 in about 2 years.

Love your enthusiasm for Ford, but…. First, maybe the new Focus has Euro roots (if the 9 year-old original model counts), but it is definitely as North American-small car design as it gets.

The problem was that Ford made a major market miscalculation in 2002-03. Ford made a strategic choice not to produce the C-1 platform in North America (citing cost), leaving it to Volvo and Mazda. It also left the CD3 platform to the Mazda6. In 2004, Ford should have: (1) made a new Volvo-platform large sedan (and not name it Taurus) (25K); (2) put the new Taurus on the CD3 sedan platform (20K); (3) pushed the Focus upscale on the C-1 (17-18K); and (4) introduced the Euro Fiesta as its small car (14K). By 2010, Ford will actually have all of that in place with the new Taurus, Fusion, C-2 Focus, and Verve/Fiesta. If Ford had adequately tracked market trends in ‘04, it would not be so late to the party.

And despite my earlier comment about the ugliness of Focii, this car, and even the old one, aren’t nearly as bad as the Caliber. I’m having trouble thinking of a car that’s uglier than the Caliber. The Caliber is even worse than the original Tribeca.