I originally wated to post something like Focus sales are up in may, like they were almost up in april. It seems they have fallen through the basement. I hate to admit it but i am warming to the redesign, I still hate it, but it no longer causes me to vomit. I'd hope they would at least level off. It is a mo win situation for us, as long as sales suck there is no incentive to make it better. If ssales were to increase it would embolden those who think the the 05 redesign was good idea.
either way we lose.
I beg to differ. Ford brought the focus over because Escort sales sucked, and the car had a horrible image. They had NOTHING to lose by coming out with a completely different car. By taking a risk, they sold a LOT of foci for a profit. The car sold on its own merits, not because it was “cheep”
Incentives were “cool” things like sending personalized “gifts” for buying the car like a mug, and watch, or CD case that said “focus” on it. This made people feel positive about there car buying experience and little things like that went a long way to make people happy with FoMoCo.
The sales of the focus are now based on the fact its cheep, and has a huge rebate on it. It’s completely boring, and impersonal. It is now an appliance that takes you from point A to point B.
Price is not everything “value” is. You would have thought ford would have learned that by now with the focus.
the focus sells because its a cheap economy car, not because they want the c1 or the old look back. 99% of american consumers could care less about either of those.
No that’s how AMERICAN car companies try to sell small cars. Toyota, and Honda give you a decent car, at a higher price.
When the focus FIRST came out ford sole ALLOT of them. It also was selling for about the same price as the civic, and corolla. For an AMERICAN car company this was big news, for once they were selling a small car for a PROFIT, not just because they needed to make there mileage goals to offset SUV’s.
After the focus came out in the US, ford NA every year looked at ways to “cheapen” the focus so they could sell them for less. All this did was turn it into any other American car. People saw the car getting cheaper, and decided to just pass it by.
Look at the statistics. Ford sold the MOST foci when they charged MORE for them. When they lowered the price on them they sold less.
Remember when the focus came out EVERY review talked about Euro this and Euro that about the car. FORD said there goal with the car was to make it so someone could drive a focus in Europe as the main car, take a flight to the US and rent one, and not even notice its not there own car. This plan worked VERY well.
The downfall of the focus in NA was ANYTHING ford NA touched. Any part they changed for the US launch had to be recalled, and any “cost cutting” measure they took was very noticeable and caused people to not want the car any more.
Ford needs to come over with a POS b segment car that sells for $10,000 new, and they need to bring over the C1 focus UNTOUCHED from Europe. Hell go as far as to let ford Europe manage the US plant! Then charge what the car is worth.
Now this couldn’t happen for a few years until ford raised the price on the fusion. To get people into that car ford is charging even less than Hyundai for a standard size American car, and the C1 focus would overlap piecewise.
If you guys want to see the C1 focus here, hope the Fusion sells VERY well, and sells as fully loaded modes, so ford keeps loading them up with more stuff each year (and Raising the price) IF all ford sells is base model fusions, we will be stuck with the current platform for quite some time.
