Fleets Flirting With Ford's Fusion

Edward Niedermeyer
by Edward Niedermeyer

Ford’s fleet business has traditionally been in trucks and full-sized vans, a fact that explains why you’ve never seen an E-Series van in anything other than fleet white. But with residuals on the Ford Fusion staying higher than, well, the Sebring and Malibu, Ford’s recently-refreshed midsized sedan is becoming an attractive fleet option as analysts project a pickup in corporate fleet buying this year. Ford’s Jim Farley tells Automotive News [sub]:

We’re seeing a whole new group of clients come to us saying we want to buy Fusions. We’ve never had that before, at least in the recent past, and that has really grown our commercial fleet business.

Never had this before? Really? What about Crown Vic/Towncar? What about the third- and fourth-gen Taurus? What about the V6 Mustang Convertible that every rental storefront has at least one of? Besides, what happened to reducing profit-sucking fleet dependence? Oh well, something had to replace the Pontiac G6. And if anything kills a model’s resale, it’s heavy fleet sales… if that’s what is drawing the corporate interest, it won’t last long.

Edward Niedermeyer
Edward Niedermeyer

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  • Plee Plee on Jan 21, 2010

    These fleet sales are not the ones that flood the market with one year old low mile rentals. Most fleets that I am aware of keep cars for at least 3 years and often pushing 100K miles. This has no affect on the residual value like rental cars do. My company buys cars that we use 5 years or 100K+ on the odometer. They for the most part do not even go back into the used car market, our franchisees buy them for book value.

    • Carguy Carguy on Jan 21, 2010

      plee +1: There is a difference between rentals and fleets. Rental companies turn their vehicles over quickly while commercial fleets keep their vehicles for 3 years or more which is no more of a drag on resale values than private ownership.

  • Krhodes1 Krhodes1 on Jan 21, 2010

    I suspect the difference is that these fleet sales are happening at a whole lot closer to normal retail price, rather than the super deep discounts it took to sell Tauri and G6s to the rental car agencies. Lately I have been getting almost nothing but compact and mid-size Japanese cars from Hertz, I can't imagine Toyota and Nissan are giving them anything like the discounts they used to get from GM and Ford. But the good residuals and reliability probably make the TCO lower.

    • George B George B on Jan 21, 2010

      Rented a Toyota Camry from Hertz last summer. It was a 2008 with about 40,000 miles on the odometer and lots of scratches. I got the impression that Hertz was willing to put more miles on their Camrys and Corollas than they used to put on Tauruses and Focuses.

  • Z71_Silvy Z71_Silvy on Jan 21, 2010

    I guess that explains where a lot of those 7K+ Taurus' went last month.

    • See 1 previous
    • Z71_Silvy Z71_Silvy on Jan 22, 2010

      "80% of Taurus sales have been retail, 20% SHO." Who said that? Ford? If so...I wouldn't believe it for a second. Ford will print anything in those arrogant press releases they are constantly issuing.

  • John Horner John Horner on Jan 22, 2010

    "Ford’s fleet business has traditionally been in trucks and full-sized vans ... " Ford has been selling large numbers of cars to corporate and government fleets forever.

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