I don't want a Fiat. I want a Ford.
I never claimed to be a genius savior of Ford. But the idea to sell competitive product Ford already has in its stable in its home country was good enough for the previous CEO.
There are many reasons why cars don't sell. The whole Merkur thing was a stupid idea and they botched the marketing of that bigtime. I'll even do you one better and bring up one that you haven't. The Contour/Mystique. Those didn't sell well because they marketed them head to head against cars like the Accord, where they had many practical shortcomings, like rear seat space. What they SHOULD have done is marketed them as an admittedly smaller, premium, sporty V6 alternative to the everyday boring sedan. They had the Taurus if you really wanted a boring sedan. But instead they built most of them with 4 cylinders and automatics and apples to apples with the competition they decided they would compete with, they weren't as good. And, oh what an automatic that was. Total junk. That's not a reason to abandon a strategy, but that's what they did. Ford does a complete 180 every couple of years, it seems. Well, that didn't work (even if it DID), let's try something else. That wastes a ton of money when you start completely fresh every couple of years. Instead of dumping everything you've built, spend that money on making the products better as often as your competition does. They'd probably be able to afford to do that if they didn't roll out whole new strategies every 10 years or so.
And what about the Fusion? It's a European product. It's just like the Mondeo. The previous gen one, anyway... Despite the fact, they've announced they're discontinuing it (You'd think joeblow American wouldn't put a lot of confidence in a car the company intends to sh**can), but it still sells well enough that Ford's kept it around. They wouldn't do that if it wasn't beneficial to them.
This whole dumping sedans thing is just a non-car guy CEO wanting to do something to make a name for himself. It's just another in a long line of Ford marketing 180s, even if it is the most extreme.
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