Good move on Ford's side I think. They should do the same with Volvo quick.
In the meantime they should ditch Mercury as a brand and focus on Ford and Lincoln. Two brands are enough for now.
I think Ford, with Mulally on board, which seems to have a plan and executing on it, has a chance to turn around. Didn't he say the other day that Ford does not need bailout money (at this time at least)?
I'm with you on this,
though I think they could use Mercury as a nameplate for Euro Fords.I believe Ford can make it without the gov money, but they won't refuse it in case they offer, eheheheh.
Lots of people say that, but I don't think it is right. Why? Because Mercury is a US-only brand while Ford is a global brand. Mercury caters to the traditional American tastes, which the Euro Fords are not. Also, if Ford puts a Mercury grill on the Euro models, they will look different (worse), which we (the car enthusiasts who ask for Euro Ford models) don't want. Ford is the main brand FoMoCo needs to focus on and rebuild. Badge engineering is costly and not warranted at all.
Fusion, Flex, Explorer, Edge, Escape, Focus (N/A), etc. are America-only cars and they could be easier transferred to Mercury. Some have Mercury correspondents already - Fusion, Escape so it's even cheaper this way. Ford definitely should sell the new Euro cars in Canada, where I think they will have a big success as Canadians love those types of cars, but Mercury is not present in Canada and this is not a good time to build a new dealership network here (or anywhere).
Ford should stay mainstream as it has always been, just build nice quality cars people
want to buy. A quality car doesn't really have to be expensive and Mazda and Honda already proved it. Forget about selling the Euro Fords as premium cars which they are not.
Looked at GM’s strategy to bring the Opel cars here as Saturn. Well, I think the vast majority of people don't want a Saturn car, regardless of how good the car is, because Saturn means Ion and other ill cars from the past. Ideally, GM would scrap Saturn and convert the dealerships into Opel and bring the Euro models without major changes (yeah, put cup holders in them, or better off, design them with cup holders and armrests from the beginning). I know this is tough to do in the current climate, but this is what I think they should've done some time ago when they still had the means to do it. What they actually did was to bring a mix bag of cars here (except for Astra, the rest of the current Saturn models only resemble Oples from the outside, because everything else is from the GM North America parts bin), just to fill the line-up and this did not work very well. Saturn didn't gain anything from this strategy, just burning cash like any other GM division.
