I'll be awaiting your updated ES350 review. It took them 3 years to re-engineer the seats. ( https://carbuzz.com/news/lexus-es-en...ping-the-seats )

 

Jill: You just made RNM GS3's argument for him. If Ford has such "[poor] management with short term vision", they will never update their sedan platforms and never be able to compete on an equal footing with Toyota, Honda and Nissan. Instead of taking the financial easy road, Ford should take a risk and invest in more than just crossovers and trucks, for the sake of their future in North America.

What happened to Alan Mulally's vision?

 

You guys need to read between the lines. Ford executives are saying in a nice way, their sedans are perceived as second rate junk for the US market, they start off at less money than the Japanese, they often need very large incentives to move them and its costs Ford more money to build them than the Japanese counterparts which are made in the Southern US. You also talk about how great the Fusion is and how you like it, well I say poppycock, you didn't exactly buy one. I don't think anyone on here owns one, all cars are good, the question is can you sell them. Fusion is perceived as a second rate vehicle (to the Japanese brand faithfull) in the same way as a Tundra is considered inferior to the domestic truckss which it is. Now, add in the considerable investment needed to upgrade the domestic produced plants that make these sedans, the idiot steel tariffs which make the cost of making these cars higher, the new requirement of 75% domestic parts, the fact that sedans are slowing, the fact that overall car sales are slowing, the higher cost of UAW produced Fords and you have a next generation Fusion which will be a flop. And that flop will be Made in USA disaster. If the decision to do this is a disaster and Ford needs sedans to fill a need because of a recession which will result in smaller cars and sedans becoming popular again, Ford will import these cars from somewhere else, the current Fusion is already assembled in Mexico.

 

I ask again: What happened to Alan Mulally's vision? He realized that to compete, you need good product. In the last great recession, when we nearly lost the North American automakers, it was because they had become complacent and become reliant on an overly-narrow range of product, and the rest of the range was sub-standard. Let's hope we don't see that again.

Just because I don't own and drive a Fusion does not give me the right to say that it is good? A lot of members here give their opinions of how good or how bad cars are without owning them.

All of these factors affect ALL new vehicles, not just sedans.

All new designs cost a considerable investment. All new vehicles have steel in them, and larger crossovers and trucks have more steel in them than sedans. All new vehicles built in North America will eventually have to have 75% North American (USA, Canada, Mexico) content, not just sedans.

Importing sedans to fill a gap is more easily said than done. You have to plan to meet North American-specific vehicle requirements, including crash-test standards, emissions standards, lighting standards. You then need to find and contract the suppliers to build these parts and components. You then need to find and plan for slots in those international assembly lines. You then need to find transportation to bring them over. And you still have not taken into consideration any import tariffs that may apply.

 

BrettJacks has a Fusion...but I don't remember what year it is.

And the fact that the Fusion is a good mid-size sedan certainly is not poppycock. It formed an excellent base for the Lincoln MKZ, though I'll admit that the MKZ's quality control (as with the Lincoln MKC) could be improved.

I strongly considered an MKZ, BTW (you probably remember the post)..but the lack of a N/A, non turbo V6 was one of several reasons for going with Buick. With the MKZ, it was all or nothing in the engine department....a turbo 4 or twin turbo V6.

 

QFT.

 

 

To sum up, you guys have basically said that Ford have produced a mediocre range of sedans which sell poorly as a result.
Hybrids can sell much worse, but government mandate ensures that Ford hybrids must be produced, while Ford sedans are axed.
You have basically said that Ford may be making a mistake with axing sedans, and they have been known for their big mistakes in the past.

 

First, the Fusion is not mediocre, at least not IMO, though its quality control at the factory could be improved a little.

Yes I did, and I stand by the comment. Ford, though credited with some great successes like the 1964 Mustang and 1985 Taurus, had also made a lot of classic blunders. The late-50s Edsel was a complete flop, for several reasons...the wrong car at the wrong time. King Henry II, in the 1970s, even over Lee Iacocca's protesting, stubbornly refused the design for a minivan....Iacocca, when Henry fired him and his engineer-friend Hal Sperlich, took the idea to Chrysler with them, and the resulting Voyager/Caravan changed the automotive scene for decades....leaving both Ford and GM with their pants down. Ford management refused to make a relatively inexpensive revision to the Pinto's frame to protect the gas tank....and we all know what happened with that. The Pinto-based Mustang II of the mid-1970s was an insult to one's intelligence....particularly that of Mustang fans. Ford, against good advice, insisted on trying to sell the German-sourced Murkur line in the U.S. in the 1980s....which was almost as much of a flop as the Edsel. And King Henry II, in the late 70s/early-80s, also resisted downsizing the RWD compact and mid-size cars and converting them to FWD until GM and Chrysler had both done so, and racked up huge sales doing it.

So...while none of us has a crystal ball on this latest decision to axe most (if not all) of the U.S.-market sedans, and cannot predict with 100% certainty if it will be a bad decision or not, many of Ford's similar actions have obviously not turned out well. And this is a rash decision, based on a current market that is (probably temporarily) heavily-SUV-based, but could easily change in the future.

 

The Fusion is a very nice European sedan that Ford brought over to the US. It's baggage is that it is not considered durable and reliable especially after it gets to certain mileage benchmarks. The Japanese conquered that ages ago. So Camry and Accord and even Maxima from earlier years provide reliability that family sedan buyers crave. Fusions are not even on CR's recommended lists for family sedans in the $10K - $25K used car lists. They even recommend an E class Benz as a used vehicle. Certainly not the only source to look at for CR bashers, but not entirely inaccurate.

A Ford product, especially a turbocharged Ford product is headed for trouble at some point. A Camry and Accord are not. A Fusion making 300K without major repairs is an outlier, while Accords, Camrys and even Maximas have been breezing past these numbers over and over again for years. It's what makes a family sedan's reputation among shoppers. It's why Lexus and Toyota own the reliabilty rankings.

 

I must say, this is the post of the day. Very well said.

 

Thank you

And what might have driven Ford execs nuts was that now the Koreans have been quite busy using the Japanese model and put out sedans that are better for reliabilty and durability than Ford's Focus and Fusion sedans. This is why Ford IMHO has been busy making big dollars on F150s, Expeditions and Explorers. They've simply decided that if you don't have any sort of corner on the market in sedans, then make moola on something that people are headed for.

What is the trend among Detroit makers? Ford and GM don't want to sell you their sedans. There was a thread about that on Car Chat recently. Why is that? Chrysler is hanging on because it's using MB tech on its full sized RWD niche vehicles but got rid of the Dart, and 200 pronto. It's the migration of American Detroit sedan buyers into SUVs and CUVs. The Japanese and the Koreans will now fight it out. The Koreans are playing catch up while Toyota and Honda will duke it out.

 

 

The latest lines from Ford management says absolutely nothing more than what they said originally... "Market demand" is open-ended and could mean a million things. But in this case, it means the market is not demanding Ford Fusions. Why? They do not have the strong appeal their counterparts have. Of course Ford will not say that, even though that is reality. Once again, Honda, Toyota, and Hyundai have no problem selling their sedans today. It would be refreshing to see an honest business announcement when it comes to discontinued cars. Or if one cannot be honest, don't say anything at all.

The story of Ford announcing the demise of it's sedans is no different than all past stories of other car makers discontinuing poor sellers. The same turn of events happens each time. And everytime, management comes up with stories and excuses as to why (smokescreen). We should not buy into the repeating BS. It's simply a product that does not match up as well to it's competitors, and therefore sells poorly. Poor selling models get axed. THE END. Ford has no one to blame but themselves, just as Chrysler and GM have no one else to blame but themselves for axing their slow selling cars.

 

While I respect your opinion, some of it I don't totally agree with. Some vehicles are as good or better than the competition, and yet still sell poorly. The Fusion, in a number of ways, is just as good or better than the Camry or Accord, though its general reliability and quality control at the factory probably won't quite stand up as much. Also, take some of your Chrysler products...the Challenger, Charger, and 300, for example, don't have a good reliability record, yet still sell quite well, and all three, particularly with the Hemi V8s, have very high customer-satisfaction ratings. Ditto for some Jeeps.