Ford reveals booted Fiesta in China

Ford unveiled the Fiesta sedan at the Guangzhou motor show in China last week, one year on from the debut of the Verve sedan concept that inspired the Fiesta. The four-door Fiesta will be sold in China and the USA, but there are no plans to offer the traditional body style here in Australia -- despite both the Toyota Yaris and the Holden Barina being sold locally in sedan form.

Neither Ford nor Mazda plans to bring sedan variants of their respective light cars to Australia, even though there's already a Mazda2 sedan on sale in China (more here) and the Fiesta sedan will go into production shortly.

Honda appears to have spotted a seachange in the local light-car market, announcing recently that the City would make its way to Australia to sell alongside the Jazz hatch (more here). So why is it that some companies choose to sell light sedans here, while others don't?

In Ford's case, it concerns how the different body styles are perceived around the world. While in Europe (and Australia), the hatchback is a no-nonsense car for the purposes of commuting, shopping or transporting kids, in China it's considered to be a sportier car and it's the sedan that is the bread-and-butter passenger car of choice.

At the international launch of the Fiesta in September, Martin Smith, Executive Design Director for Ford of Europe, told journalists as much when discussing the Verve concepts on which the new Fiesta was based, and the market research Ford has conducted around the world.

"We have research results in China... we see exactly the same first-choice results in China with the four-door as we'd achieved in Europe with the five-door," Smith said.

"Interestingly, one of the elements we had to address for tuning the vehicles around the world... in China, the hatchback body style is actually seen as a sports variant, whereas the four-door body style is seen more as a family vehicle..."

Australian market research conducted well in advance of the Fiesta's international launch has convinced Ford that there is, at present, no market here for a light-car sedan -- contrary to Honda's views.

"At the moment, we want to concentrate on the [hatchback] models we're launching and we'll go from there" says Sinead McAlary, Ford Australia's Communications Manager, who did say that more information concerning the Fiesta's positioning in the Australian market would be forthcoming at the car's local launch to the media next month.

Given the apparent commitment to sedans in the light-car segment on the part of Holden, Toyota and now Honda, we asked straight up whether Ford were missing out on market share in this VFACTS segment.

"Let's put it this way," McAlary said, "we're launching the three-door and the five-door this year and we move production to Thailand in 2010... so we have time to see what happens with the models we're launching in 2009. We will be targeting them in the first instance and trying to build sales with them -- and if there becomes an opportunity in another part of the segment, we will look at that then.

"You know us at Ford, we never say 'never'."

In respect of Honda's views that the light-car demographic is changing, McAlary freely admits that Ford doesn't subscribe to that view.

"Look, we obviously don't concur with that completely, because we're not launching with the sedan when it goes on sale in January, but as I said, if we think there's a market opportunity for us, we would look at it then -- but the three- and the five-door are what we're going with in the first instance."

And how will Ford monitor calls for a Fiesta sedan in the local market?

"Dealer feedback, primarily," McAlary responds.

"[And] There's a whole variety of customer research [avenues]. You can talk to customers who have bought one and you also research those customers who didn't buy one and find out [what] was their reason for not buying one."

Mitsubishi argues that sales of small cars are equal part hatch and sedan in the current climate and if that's a trend present in small cars, will it creep down into light cars as well, if it hasn't done so already?

"It might," says McAlary, "but we'll reserve our judgement on that one".

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