Ford FINALLY Cans Hackett!!

[ZephyrEFI]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/b...QJ6mE9Ed2lBIPQ

Oh, this made my day. The man who brought you no more Ford/Lincoln cars and a Mustang freakin' CROSSOVER is OUT!! I've disagreed with just about 100% of the moved he made, (except for continuing to build police vehicles). I'm not expecting complete reversals right away or anything, but at least Farley came up in the auto industry, so he might have a better feel for what we want.

Here's a food for thought question though: what's to stop Ford from importing the cars they build for Europe so we can have some options besides lame-a$$ crossovers, they can try to win back some of those sales they walked away from by cancelling all those products, AND they can improve volume for the European product? Seems like a great idea to me...

[Drivunn]

Ford tried that with the Fiesta and the Focus but either sales were poor or profits were.
Personally as the prior owner of both a 2012 and a 2013 Focus, the new European based Focus was well designed and a great car - unless you bought an automatic! Unfortunately many of the early car tests were on manuals that were brilliant or not " longterm" enough to show the automatics problems.
Ford badly botched the auto trans to the point of multiple software and hardware recalls, extended warranties, and ultimately a class action lawsuit settlement.
My 65 year old wife must have been a real poor driver cause her cars had Automatic transmission clutches replaced with every oil change! And every new clutch set was a new upgraded material/design.
The first was totaled at 8000 miles by a third party but already had had two transmission repairs. I dumped the second after 4 repairs and the realization that as a long term owner I would get stuck with $1000s of dollars in repairs every 8000 miles after the seven year warranty expired. At the time I sold the 2013 , in comparing the Focus and a Mazda 3 with similar miles/equipment, the Kelley Blue book valued a Focus as 25% below the Mazda 3 !
Ford Management/Engineering/Quality new the trans was bad and still launched the cars believing they'd eventually fix it. The poor quality likely hurt new car sales volume and used resale values, and the costly warranty work would have eaten a small cars profit lines up quickly.
I hate to say it, but maybe Ford was being honest when they said its hard to make a sedan as good as Toyota does it!
Happily my 2019 Bullitt is running well ...although there are lots of questions emerging about the 6 speeds durability.

[gr79]

https://www.caranddriver.com/feature...ley-interview/
https://www.freep.com/story/money/ca...ta/1299871001/
https://www.freep.com/story/money/ca...ey/5580023002/

[ZephyrEFI]

Ford tried that with the Fiesta and the Focus but either sales were poor or profits were.
Personally as the prior owner of both a 2012 and a 2013 Focus, the new European based Focus was well designed and a great car - unless you bought an automatic! Unfortunately many of the early car tests were on manuals that were brilliant or not " longterm" enough to show the automatics problems.
Ford badly botched the auto trans to the point of multiple software and hardware recalls, extended warranties, and ultimately a class action lawsuit settlement.
My 65 year old wife must have been a real poor driver cause her cars had Automatic transmission clutches replaced with every oil change! And every new clutch set was a new upgraded material/design.
The first was totaled at 8000 miles by a third party but already had had two transmission repairs. I dumped the second after 4 repairs and the realization that as a long term owner I would get stuck with $1000s of dollars in repairs every 8000 miles after the seven year warranty expired. At the time I sold the 2013 , in comparing the Focus and a Mazda 3 with similar miles/equipment, the Kelley Blue book valued a Focus as 25% below the Mazda 3 !
Ford Management/Engineering/Quality new the trans was bad and still launched the cars believing they'd eventually fix it. The poor quality likely hurt new car sales volume and used resale values, and the costly warranty work would have eaten a small cars profit lines up quickly.
I hate to say it, but maybe Ford was being honest when they said its hard to make a sedan as good as Toyota does it!
Happily my 2019 Bullitt is running well ...although there are lots of questions emerging about the 6 speeds durability.

Yeah yeah, that auto was a bigtime failure. There are plenty of people like me who would buy a new Focus or Fiesta if I knew it didn't have that same transmission in it. I'm a manual guy anyway, so I probably wouldn't be in the market for an auto, but that's beside the point. It would take a hell of a lot to push me to another brand. For now, we're keeping what we have in the hopes that someday they come to their senses. If they don't, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Look at how well the Fusion is still selling. It hasn't gotten any attention from Ford in years, but it's still one of the better selling vehicles sold today. Idiot Hackett was perfectly content to walk away from those sales, but if they offered them, clearly people would buy them. If cars are going to be more "niche" then that just means they can charge a little more for them to make up for the cost of importing them. It might even be cheaper for them to do it that way.

[NAVYCAT]

LOVE IT! what great news, I bet that Edsel II was getting pissed. He is a car guy and people are still buying sedans and hatch backs. If you build great cars they will sell

[wraithracing]

I was never a fan of Hackett and disagreed with many if not most of his decisions and direction for Ford. With that said, we all have to admit that Ford has had a constant issue of going off on tangents for no apparent reason. I am a die hard Ford guy and have been all my life. The ONLY Non Ford vehicles I currently own are a 1969 Firebird and a 1981 Trans Am. The reason . . . Because I love them as well as Pontiac and besides Pontiac always hated Chevy as much as I do.

Ford has a history of coming up with a great idea and bringing it to production, only to abandon it a few years later. Putting all of their eggs into one basket and then being shocked with things go south. I still for the life of me don't understand why they have constantly had to design all new engines from the ground up only to decide 3,5,7 years later that they will design another. I get some of the reasons and I am not here to debate it, but all the crazy crap such as the 289/302, but oh wait we need more cubes so lets increase the deck height and make very few parts interchangeable. Oh wait, let's make the same mistake with the 4.6. Then the whole 6.0 PSD to 6.4 after replacing the 7.3 and ultimately now the 6.7.

Anyway I am getting off my soap box, I hope Ford can figure this out and bring to market a decent vehicle that will sell well enough to warrant building it and be competitive with the Toyota, Honda, etc. offerings. We drive pretty much trucks and SUV's in my house other than my Mustangs, so not necessarily my vehicle choice, but then again since Ford didn't offer a decent AWD sedan that fit our needs the SUV was the only option. Would have loved a Focus RS with an automatic and AWD, but not an option. I understand why, but still it might have sold even better. I love a stick shift in most vehicles, but honestly I don't want to have to shift my truck, my SUV, nor my commuter car in many case. With the rave reviews the Ford 10 speed auto is getting I would be hard pressed to buy a new Mustang with the stick right now personally.

Anyway, good riddance to Hackett and hopefully Ford will do better and make better decisions in the near future.

[ZephyrEFI]

Maybe Ford's ups and downs could be attributed to Bill Ford's bad break-ups with CEOs. He is particularly smitten with HACKett for some reason, so maybe his "retirement" came as a surprise to Billy boy, so we'll see some "revenge" moves right away. I would LOVE that.

I do see that they, including Farley keep talking about the new directions "with the Mustang Mach-E, and Bronco brands..." Yuck, I can't believe I just typed that. But NOW is the perfect time to reverse course, start listening to the enthusiasts and get the Mustang name off that abomination!!!

[erratic50]

Glad he’s out

im a die hard stick fan when it comes to performance cars. Not because they out do what a great auto does. It’s because they are a lot more engaging for the driver

Ford does a terrible job of causing the need for one off parts and they always have. One of the biggest pains about Ford. But I’ve only ever owned one Chevy. Bought it new and it was a pile of crap.

these days the garage is full of Lincoln, Ford, and even a little Mercury for a few more days until my daughter leaves for college.

Then need to get back to building cars that people want. A sporty car for the kid out of college. A midsize four door for the commuter. Etc all wheel drive, hell yes!

Every time I drive my daughters 02 Cougar I think about how much less drama I would have had on bad roads years ago vs my Mustang. Styling wise it’s now dated but on target actually. Tons of girls in her class at high school LOVED her “cute little blue car.” So few left out there now that nobody else had one.

Hopefully they’ll get together a run of good drive trains and good looks all at once in this modern era. So many new vehicles made right now drive me crazy.

About the only thing I see me buying any time soon is an F250 or F350 platinum with a 7.3 gas and a 10 speed. If they ever bother to build another Lincoln pickup bets are off on the F series. But sufficient to say a truck that will out truck the combination of a 08 MarkLT and a 96 F250 with a 460 under the hood

what bugs the crap out of me is why the hell cant they knock the roof off the back of a Navigator LT and put a box on it instead .....

[gr79]

Hopefully Ford and others will produce new products one can afford to own, not lease and have to trade every few years due to repair costs.
No more style, paint colors, dependability, affordability. Just pile as much sh*t as possible on 4 (expensive) wheels.
130.00 battery now? How about 13,000 with electric car or truck? Not 10x- 50-100x cost. No more 200,000 mile drive trains.

Tech and govt do not help anyone with all the unnecessary and unproven directions that has raised costs enormously, passed on to consumer.
Bad trend to push everything to the limit means any little thing that breaks can lead to car down status.
Just because you can do it does not mean you should. And with other peoples money (future customers).
Price a new electronic steering rack. They will wear out just like parts of old.
Employ aircraft design, materials, quality, get aircraft prices. Yah even big cars fly now (speedwize). Marine level is high enough.

Not too late to do a simple power trains, decent interiors, option to add all the electronic gadgets, repairable after paid off or if bought used.
Too many new cars are totaled because of repair costs. Very high depreciation, low resale value, sky high insurance cost.
All my cars since 1970 have have/had less tech and options like backup cameras, a/c, power windows, airbags, IRS. Forced to buy them now.
Most absolutely not needed to get to the store, work, or take a road trip. Like 2-300.00 tires.

With all the resources, they still screw up basic proven designs more so than ever before. All 3 companies mess up.
Add this to the Ford engines and trans mistakes and FCA engines with dropped valve seats (unheard of in the old days):
https://www.freep.com/story/money/ca...on/3288932001/

[ZephyrEFI]

They're so bold, they're taking away all the things we like and replacing them with things we hate. Now THAT'S bold!

[vintageracer]

Maybe the NEXT "New Guy" will finally decide not use Ford's customer's to find all their new product engineering failures by making their Customer's Ford's exclusive "Product Testing Group"!

[gr79]

Dreamers. With no thought of cost to purchase, insure, repair of mechanical or accident.
Ask feedback from used car purchasers. The ones who can't or won't bet much to get into the game.
Who will be buying the new ones someday after they depreciate to the bottom.
The survivor affordable cars where the a/c and gizmos dont work anymore, have had or will need costly repairs.
Contain critical parts that are obtainable, common, and stood the test of time.