Ford will unveil its new Fusion at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit later this week. The car is a mid-size passenger vehicle that sells in the North American market, in counterpoint to the Euro-designed Mondeo, which sells elsewhere.
It's understood that the new Fusion will be built on the same platform set to slot in underneath the next generation of Mondeo. Further reports from around the traps suggest the even larger D-segment Taurus will also run on the same platform, although 'platform', by traditional definition, allows for a stretched wheelbase and some pinching and pulling here and there, as long as the hard points remain fixed.
With cars above and below the locally-manufactured Falcon in size all migrating to the same front-wheel drive platform, how long can the rear-drive Falcon remain unique and exclusive in a sharing, caring, One Ford world? And what if the Fusion turns out to be a bit of a stunner, as has been suggested by both Ford's president, Alan Mulally, and the company's global VP of design, J Mays? It becomes harder still for fans to continue supporting the local design beyond reason.
Concerning the future of the locally-designed/locally-built Falcon, Mulally continued to block probing questions from Australian journalists on hand in India last week for the launch of the new EcoSport model, but he remained on message.
"Our large-car strategy is the same," he said. "That is, Ford's going to have a complete family of vehicles... small, medium and large; cars, utilities and trucks. We're more committed to that than ever.
"We're going to have a Taurus-sized car. Right now it's on the D platform, which is different than the Falcon, but we're going to have a large sedan, going forward."
In citing the example of the C-platform Focus small car, Mulally hinted that a successor to the current Falcon should be readily accommodated by a global large-car platform and would be more affordable to build, due to parts commonality and rationalisation. That would also make it profitable as long as the company's local sales team upholds its end of the bargain.
"The fact that... 70 to 80 per cent of the parts are exactly the same with your supply base that's global but yet localised; right there, that's our ability to not only make what customers want for the vehicle , but also to do it more affordably," he said.
"I think it's a very compelling vision. If you're in the business — the automobile business, worldwide — you're going to be successful if you make the products that people want and they value, and you do it more productively than your competition...
"It's not real complicated."
The operative phrase there is "products that people want and they value". That's where a new product like the Fusion comes in...
Mulally's colleague and Ford's president for the Asia/Pacific and African region is Joe Hinrichs, who was also present for questioning on the same subject by the press in India. He confirmed that small and medium-sized vehicles throughout the Ford world would adopt globally-developed platforms in new generations coming up.
"B/C and C/D segments would be global platforms," Hinrichs mentioned. "But I think it's safe to assume that includes more than just the Mondeo, Fusion on the car side. So we'll have to see how that plays out."
That strongly indicates Mondeo and Fusion will be twinned in the next generation model, of course, with the further hint that the next Taurus and/or a Falcon successor may sit on the same platform. Falcon, if the nameplate continues beyond 2015, could end up a front-driven vehicle, but equally, perhaps not. It might be dropped as a name altogether, since the Mondeo is already an established moniker here.
But why would Ford drop the Falcon?
There are a number of reasons. First of all, upgrading the inline six to meet the Euro 5 emissions standard will be costly and the car's rear-drive configuration is no longer the drawcard it once was. But more importantly, sales are steadily dwindling and have been for years. It's not just the Falcon experiencing this, Commodore sales have lagged behind far enough for the Holden to be overtaken by Mazda3 in 2011. It's a sign of the times and it's one not unique to Australia, Hinrichs says.
"What you're seeing happen in Australia... what you're seeing happen with Ford globally... the product portfolio is expanding to include many small vehicles, but also more fuel-efficient vehicles. As Alan [Mulally] said yesterday, many times, consumer needs and wants and desires are converging around the world. That's true for Australia as well.
"Fuel economy is one of the most important criteria for everybody — understandably so. They want the value, the new technology; all the things that Alan talked about yesterday, and so the product portfolio is expanding, but what you have happening throughout the industry worldwide is the segment sizes are shrinking and you have to have a broader portfolio base to get the market share that you're looking for.
"Thirty years ago you had a Falcon dominating sales; you don't have one product dominating sales as much in most markets anymore. You have to have a competitive portfolio across the board. So you're seeing that the Fiesta, Focus, Mondeo and Falcon — with the EcoBoost coming — and then of course the Territory and the new Ranger... Kuga, which will be a great product... EcoSport, which will be a great product for Australia... all this fits together in the portfolio. That's true about Europe, it's true about North America, it's true about China, India..."
Mulally offered an industry forecast for the next 10 years that shows nearly 60 per cent of new cars will be B and C-sized (Fiesta and Focus-sized, respectively), with C/D segment cars accounting for 25 per cent and the remaining 15 per cent will be D-segment cars and larger. It illustrates the rapidity with which global market perceptions are changing, with Ford's own Vehicle Line Director for global C-segment cars telling motoring.com.au as recently as August last year that the small-car figures would be 50 per cent or better in about 20 years' time.
Before that, during the international launch of the current (WS/WT) Fiesta at the end of 2008 the company had suggested global small-car sales volumes might grow to as much as one third (30 or 35 per cent) by 2030. So the sales targets for small cars around the world continue to grow apace — at the expense of traditional large cars like the Falcon.
"We're all going to pay more for energy, right?" Mulally asked rhetorically, to explain what is driving the migration to small cars. "The big pools [of oil] have been found..."
To continue fuelling cars from petroleum reserves will become steadily more expensive, as the oil industry has to find reserves that are harder (and more expensive) to access. Already there are signs that small cars are very much more sophisticated and capable in order to attract buyers who have previously enjoyed the luxury of large cars, but now want the same kit in a smaller, more fuel-efficient package.
"Just a few years ago, smaller vehicles were thought of as 'cheap and cheerful'; that's just not the way it is anymore," says Mulally, who further explains that 97 nameplates in Ford's global product portfolio will eventually give way to 13 — off "eight or nine" platforms.
"We can provide all that technology more affordably than anybody else, because of that scale. That's the Ford plan."
According to the Ford CEO, top hats are the key to filling in the vacuum between different platforms in the company's product lineup. Where Ford Australia has not previously had a compact SUV to compete directly with cars like Mitsubishi's ASX, the Nissan Dualis or the Volkswagen Tiguan, now it has the EcoSport — a product of One Ford thinking. Underneath that car is mostly Fiesta-based. The combination of EcoSport and Fiesta (and European market B-MAX as well) on the same platform provides Ford with a much broader market coverage than before — doubling the company's footprint in B-segment niches.
But if the Ford range is going to bulk up through introduction of top hat derivatives, does that mean that buyers can walk into an Australian showroom 10 years from now and purchase a large, rear-drive sedan? That was the question put to Mulally by one of the Australian contingent present during the press conference the opening day of the show.
"We don't really know yet, but clearly that segment's getting smaller..."
EcoBoost and the slow-burning EcoLPI Falcon variants seem like affordable measures to keep the Falcon relevant and profitable to the end of its current design life, but the government's determination to introduce a Euro 5-based emissions standard in the next few years may just be the final nail in the coffin for the inline six, as already mentioned.
That may not make any difference if the EcoBoost four proves immensely popular, but it's genuinely difficult to believe Falcon can remain uniquely indigenous and uniquely rear-driven beyond 2015 or thereabouts with just a four-cylinder, when Ford already sells Mondeo with an EcoBoost engine.
Ford is clearly concerned about any end to Falcon production being announced officially, assuming the decision has already been made, but viewed objectively there are a lot of positives in a post-2015 large Ford sedan for the Aussie market being based on a platform also intended for Mondeo, Fusion and Taurus. Ford Australia has already demonstrated that the lack of a Falcon wagon needn't hurt sales if the dealers can convince buyers to opt for the more efficient and safer Mondeo wagon instead. Fleet buyers are the least likely to be concerned that Falcon may no longer be rear-wheel drive or a uniquely Australian design.
For that component of the population making up better than 80 or 90 per cent, the end of the Falcon nameplate will be an excuse to stop associating the Ford name with taxis. That might conceivably lead to an upturn in sales of the imported product — and buyers might go to the trouble of comparing Mondeo against its Japanese and Korean competitors as the company's brand image improves in the wider community.
Most vocerifous in their support of the Falcon product, private buyers who choose Falcons for their straight-line performance might be mollified by an all-wheel drive SHO model with a turbocharged EcoBoost V6. Traction and 0-100km times (in wet and dry) could be improved as a consequence.
For all those who complain that front-wheel/all-wheel drive cars never handle or steer as well as rear-drive cars — a debatable point where Falcon is concerned, certainly up against its Mondeo stablemate — that's basically a challenge for Ford engineers to overcome. And if any company's engineers can achieve decent steering and handling in a front-wheel drive, it's likely to be Ford's.
Of greater concern than just the principle of losing an indigenous design and rear-wheel drive is the possibility that Ford might end manufacturing in Australia, should it prove cheaper to import a large car (and Explorer in lieu of Territory). Hundreds of production-line workers would be dismissed as a consequence. And without manufacturing, just how sustainable is the product development effort in Australia?
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