I’m going drifting. I’m going drifting dressed in the finest English brown velour ever to roll out of Dagenham, England. I’m going drifting in what this week’s Curbside Classic should have been, a 1983 Ford Sierra. And with that, I rejoin TTAC after a long hiatus due to our wonderful country sending me to various deserts to hunt for Osama bin Laden.
I have survived, although my Hilux did not after one ill-placed Taliban rocket sent shrapnel through the radiator. I also relish returning to write for one of the finest audiences I know, the Best and Brightest.
The new CR reliability reports are out, along with their projected reliability for 2011-model-year automobiles. Some of the results won’t be news to most of you: the Big Three from Japan are all near the top, Ford’s ahead of the other domestics, and the Koreans are climbing the charts.
If, on the other hand, you’re choosing between a Porsche and an Audi, you might want to take a moment to hear CR’s opinions…
Ford’s profitability outstripped even yesterday‘s $1.37b estimate, coming in at a whopping $1.68b, as Ford made mad money in the North American market in the 3rd Quarter of this year, for a fifth consecutive profitable quarter. Global revenue was down by about $1b, but excluding Volvo from Q33 2009 results, revenue was actually up $1.7b. $1.6b of Ford’s profitability came from North America, as its most crucial market carried the company over weak overseas results. And with $900m in positive cash flow, Ford says its “automotive cash” will equal its debt by the year’s end, sooner than it had previously forecast. Ford paid of $2b of its revolving credit line last quarter, and plans to pay off the final $3.6b it owes the UAW VEBA trust in Q4. By the end of the year, Ford estimates it will have reduced its overall debt by $10.8b over the course of 2010. Hit the jump for a few key slides from Ford’s Q3 financial presentation.
About a year Editor-in Chief, Ed Niedermeyer, reported that GM and SAIC were discussions about co-operating in the Indian market. Then, in May, our overseas editor, Bertel Schmitt, reported how GM China was going to raid their Chinese line up and sell it in India. I dismissed the developments as the first step in GM being “China-centric”. But today Automotive World reports that Zhang Baolin, President of Chongqing Changan Automobile is having talks with Ford (their western partner in China) about extending their partnership from China to, you guessed it, India. “We have discuss with Ford to use their network to expand overseas, but have not yet come to an agreement yet,” said Zhang Baolin, via Bloomberg News. On the topics’ list are things like whose brand to use and what vehicles will be sold in India.
The Freep reports that Ford is allocating an extra 250 workers to its Dearborn plant in Michigan. Why? Well, because the Dearborn plant makes the F-150 and because sales are rising. Ford can’t make them fast enough. According to Autodata, Ford’s share of the pick-up market has risen 4.2 percent this year. This is great news, Ford is getting more Americans back into work, right? Not quite. (Read More…)
Welcome to Tinfoil Time. A public service for paranoids and their enemies. When the NHTSA went after Toyota for their runaway cars, some people (me, included) saw this as a transparent attempt to undermine Toyota in order to make GM and Chrysler (A.K.A new arms of the US government) more attractive both in terms of purchasing their products and the IPO’s. But now that the circus is leaving town, is the NHTSA looking for a new victim? Whilst searching the net, I saw (part of) an article (sub) which mentions how Ford’s North American market share is on the rise. Sure, Toyota’s market share in the U.S. dropped by 1.5 percent compared to September 2009. But GM did not pick up those sales. They lost 2.8 percent. The winners were Ford (+ 1.4 percent), and Chrysler (+2.1 percent).I also remember a poll that was taken which claimed that how 54 percent of people were less likely to buy a GM car because of their bailout. Rising sales at Ford and bad will towards GM? I’ve seen this scenario before! The next stage is now the NHTSA will tell us to stop driving our Fords. Trouble is, Ford doesn’t have any recalls of recent. So what can the NHTSA do? You recycle a recall. (Read More…)
Count on Rodney to ruin a fine romance. “I just thought you should know,” he said as I opened up the lockbox to find the keys for our only four-cylinder, five-speed Probe, “that I screwed your up.”
“You screwed me up?” It wouldn’t be the first time; he’d recently driven a new Taurus headfirst into our “JBL: The Sound Of Ford” display while trying to manuever it out of the showroom, approximately four hours before I was scheduled to deliver it to its new owner.
“No, I screwed your up. The girl sitting at your desk. With the hairy forearms.” Come to think of it, her forearms did have a fair amount of remarkably dark hair on them. “She still thinks my name is Cleveland Washington or something like that. We hit it off right in the club bathroom, like I am known to do.” And yes, indeed, Rodney was rather infamous for anonymous tile-surrounded sex. There were five waitresses who worked the late shift at our local Waffle House. Rodney had violated two of them on the women’s sink over the past year and was working a third with all the patience of a champion bass fisherman. “You know what it means when a girl has hairy forearms.”
“I really don’t.” So he told me. Well, I should have realized that.
There’s an old Russian saying, “success has many fathers while failure is an orphan”. The automotive world has plenty of examples of that. Perhaps a half dozen Italian designers have taken credit for the Lamborghini Miura. Zora-Arkus Duntov is often called the “father” of the Corvette, even though it was seeing the already in production Corvette on display at the 1953 Autorama in New York City that inspired Duntov to write Ed Cole asking for a job as an engineer at Chevy in the first place.
Another case of mistaken automotive paternity is the Mustang. If you asked 100 auto enthusiasts the question, “who originated the idea of the Ford Mustang?”, most would say Lee Iacocca. After all, he made the cover of Time magazine when the original 64 1/2 was such a hit. When you type in Iacocca, Google autosuggests “iacocca mustang”. He’s even sold Iacocca signature editions of the ‘Stang. Sometimes Ford product manager Donald Frey, who passed away earlier this year, is given the credit for the Mustang’s concept. While Frey was a staunch advocate for the sporty four-seater, selling the idea to Iacocca and shepherding it past resistance from Henry Ford II, it turns out that he wasn’t the originator of the idea. In fact, as Robert Cumberford explains, the idea didn’t even start at Ford, or even a car company, it was the idea of ad man Barney Clark, and he pitched it first to General Motors, not Ford.
TTAC tested the street version of this car a few years ago: check it out for a classic example of mid-RF-era TTAC reviews, complete with withering attention to interior-quality issues and not-so-gentle comments regarding the unwillingness of the average automaker to purchase a Ford.
At the time, the Focus sold for about fifteen grand. That was for the street car. How much does a racing Focus cost? The answer: One dollar. The answer is also $2500. And $6000. And $25,000. Confused yet?
Yesterday, we reported that Ford and Mazda will be parting ways completely, after having lived married, but separated for a while. Ford will retain a token “3 percent or less” interest, why is anybody’s guess. Question for Mazda: What now? In January, we said: “What Mazda needs are strong partners in strong markets.” Back when, the Nikkei [sub] thought Mazda could get closer with Toyota, based on the fact that Mazda decided to procure a hybrid system from Toyota. That alone doesn’t make for a marriage. You won’t marry Safeway, just because you shop there. Toyota wants to become the systems house for hybrids, just like BMW will sell its engines to anyone with money. (Read More…)
End of 2008, Ford was in dire need of cash and decided to sell off a 20 percent chunk of their 33.4 percent holdings in Mazda. Both promised that their cozy relationship would not suffer over something mundane like money. Of course, it wasn’t so. Their relationship disintegrated in record time. And now, they will make it official. Ford Motor Co. has decided to reduce its stake in Mazda by selling a large portion of its remaining shareholdings to Sumitomo group firms and other companies with which Mazda enjoys close business ties, The Nikkei [sub] just learned. (Read More…)
According to our latest sales data, the Detroit Three have enjoyed something of a comeback relative to the “foreign” competition this year. And though it’s not clear how long that trend will last, the media is catching the Detroit-boosting bug again. The NYT’s Bill Vlasic epitomizes the mood, focusing on improvements in GM and Ford’s products in a piece titled American Cars Are Getting Another Look. Between IQS score improvements and anecdotal evidence of consumer interest in Ford and GM’s “gadgets” and “value,” Vlasic’s sidekick, Art Spinella of CNW Research, forwards an interesting theory for the death of the “perception gap” (a construct he helped create, by the way):
Ford has become almost the ‘halo brand’ for G.M. and Chrysler. Because of Ford’s success, people are less resistant in general to considering all of Detroit’s products.
Well, that’s not the dumbest thing ever said about the destruction of the perception gap… but it sure is a head-scratcher. Did Nissan and Honda just spend the last several decades skating by on Toyota’s sterling reputation (RIP)? Still, it might be interesting to hear Ford’s perspective on all this.
A few days ago Ford reported that 35 percent of the Lincoln dealers are superfluous and should be sent out to pasture – to avoid the word “cull.” The metro areas appear to have a particular overabundance of Lincoln dealers. According to Mark Fields, President of Ford Americas, this is where “the efficiencies” need to come from. The news didn’t go down too well. The Freep quoted one dealer. “It was a somber day,” said Larry Taylor, Lincoln-Mercury dealer near Dayton, Ohio, “I’m secure. But there are some guys who have had a store for 50, 60 years who are going to have to give that up.” Mark Fields, President of Ford Americas is adamant: “We are fully committed to transforming Lincoln into a world-class luxury brand.” Now Ford is upping the ante against uppity Lincoln dealers. (Read More…)
I’m not a big fan of Ford. But you have to respect their turnaround. They took a huge gamble at a really, economically-speaking, dangerous time. What’s also hard to deny is Alan Mulally’s charisma and ability to get people to work together.
Without it, Ford would be tapping that line of credit they secured from the US government. Well, while I was reading the BBC website I came across this radio show, Global Business with Peter Day. And Alan Mulally was the guest for today’s episode. I found it very interesting and I hope you do too. Click on the link to take you to listen.
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