Ford CEO hints at RWD large car

Ford CEO Alan Mulally has signalled the company's intention to build a new rear-wheel drive large car, which could be based on a platform for a future Falcon.

Respected industry publication, Automotive News, reported remarks attributed to Mulally and his global product chief, Derrick Kuzak at a recent dinner in Detroit.

"It's important going forward", Mulally commented.

The CEO, formerly of Boeing, joined the company after work had begun on the Lincoln MKR and Ford Interceptor concepts that were displayed at last year's North American International Auto Show in Detroit. Kuzak was among his first appointments.

"Yes, we're working on a rear-wheel drive plan for the enterprise," Kuzak said. "It's in the plan."

Both men stopped short of making any concrete pronouncements, but Automotive News described the comments as "the first confirmation that Ford intends to go ahead with modern RWD cars".

To date, Ford's large RWD sedan has been the Crown Victoria, an older car approximately Fairlane-sized and still built on a full chassis. It has been the darling of taxi and police fleets, but its image has been tarnished in recent years, with occupants allegedly burned to death in rear-end accidents involving the cars.

The Crown Victoria is virtually unique in the US market, having its fuel tank mounted aft of the rear axle. Readers will recall that Holden had to relocate the Monaro's fuel tank before that car could be sold in the US as the Pontiac GTO.

Ford has suspended sales of the Crown Victoria to the public and has been sued repeatedly, by both police and civil litigants.

With that sort of background, the Crown Victoria and its Lincoln-Mercury equivalents, the Lincoln Town Car and the Mercury Grand Marquis, are in limbo.

The Crown Victoria is a solid-selling performer in Middle East markets and has, by its presence, blocked Ford Australia from selling the Falcon in the Gulf Countries, which would have provided some additional volume for the Broadmeadows manufacturer and some further competition for Holden's Chevrolet-badged cars, but would have necessitated LHD conversion for the Aussie Fords.

Pontiac is about to launch the Commodore-based G8 (more here) and Ford has no answer to that car, or the Chrysler 300C/Dodge Charger and its wagon equivalent, the Magnum.

In light of that, it's increasingly important for Ford to find a suitable RWD platform on which to base new products that can compete, products that might resemble production-ready versions of the MKR and Interceptor.

Ford's executives have admitted a need to field a large RWD car, but as yet, there is no apparent commitment to building it on the Falcon platform, either the upcoming Project Orion design or any subsequent platform.

The Automotive News report ended with the supposition that new RWD models could be built on a Falcon platform, but not necessarily in Australia. This was based on a comment from Joe Hinrichs, Ford's group vice president of global manufacturing, who said: "There are good reasons not to: currency, freight".

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