Horse 1169 - Will The End of the Falcon Spell the End of Ford Australia?

The Ford Falcon as we know it is pretty well much in trouble. Last month's NRMA Open Road magazine even hinted at the idea of the Falcon being replaced with a Front-Wheel-Drive car the Ford Taurus. If that were to happen then the platform which the Ford Falcon Ute is built on would also be discontinued and likely to be replaced with the Second Generation Ford Ranger and the Ford Territory would dropped and replaced with the Ford Explorer.

It really does make me wonder what Ford Australia have been doing for the past five years. Surely they should have seen that people are voting with their wallets and buying smaller vehicles. Even Holden have more or less worked an exit strategy with their Cruze and even started building the hatchback variants in Australia. Ford were supposed to have started building the Focus by now, but that fell through when they promised to build a four-cylinder Falcon... which also fell through.

To be perfectly blunt, Ford should have been watching the charts themselves. The Mazda 3 which was number 2 on the sales charts, shares the same platform as the Ford Focus. It's kind of sad from Ford's point of view to see what effectively amounts to your stablemate streaking ahead like this.


http://www.caradvice.com.au/107997/february-2011-vfacts-new-vehicle-sales-off-2010-pace/

1. Holden Commodore – 3829
2. Mazda3 – 3575
3. Toyota HiLux – 2892
4. Hyundai i30 – 2654
5. Toyota Corolla – 2600
6. Holden Cruze – 2582
7. Nissan Navara – 2207

8. (=8.) Ford Falcon – 1572

9. (=8.) Mazda2 – 1572
10. Mitsubishi Lancer – 1561

It's not just an isolated trend either, Ford themselves in 2002 identified that the people most likely to buy a Falcon were people in the 50-65 age bracket or taxi companies. As those people are progressively getting older, they're less likely to need a big car and thus the sales for the Falcon have been trending downwards for quite some time.

http://news.drive.com.au/drive/motor-news/is-the-falcon-going-the-way-of-the-dodo-20110304-1bh3k.html

Ford Falcon sales decline

2003 – 73,220
2004 – 65,384
2005 – 53,080
2006 – 42,390
2007 – 33,941
2008 – 31,936
2009 – 31,023
2010 – 29,516
2011?? - ... oh dear.


It also makes wonder about the "Car Of The Future" in the V8 Supercars. I tend to think that the rules will eventually lead to a common unbranded car which is then modified with grilles and front and rear light clusters etc. Potentially if the Falcon disappears then what the heck do they run? A Taurus?
In the BTCC there already is quite a potent sort of match up between the Cruze and the Focus on track, although the Astra is GM's big hitter in Britain and Europe. We're going to see the Cruze-Focus barney not on the racetrack in Australia but on the showroom floor; and when Opel hits in 2012 this will stir the pot even further.
Cruze, Corolla, 3, i30, Astra, Focus - these are the cars which Australians are increasingly wanting. Basiscally they're all about the 1.8L-2.0L and a lot smaller than the 4.0L Falcon,


The thing is though that Ford Australia can develop excellent cars. They developed the Ford Ikon which was based on the Mk5 Ford Fiesta, and the car did excellently in China, India, South Africa and Brazil. Furthermore, Ford even thought that the concept was so good that they ran with it in Europe and the current Ford Fiesta Mk6 and it's stablemate Mazda 2 both come out in sedans.

If I can see these trends from afar, then why can't Ford Australia? They may as well react to the market bacuse if they don't then the Glass House in Dearborn, Michigan is very likely to throw stones and knock Ford Australia off their perch and into the past.