Anyone who has ever seen or driven European Ford products and cursed executives for not selling them in North America, your day is coming.
The current U.S. lineup has nothing in common with Ford of Europe products, but by 2010, 40 percent of the vehicles will be shared, and that number hits 100 percent by 2013, says Mark Fields, Ford president of The Americas, in the July 24 second-quarter earnings briefing.
It means the next-generation European Ford Focus sedan and five-door hatchback will be the same C-segment car here as in Europe, China, and the rest of the world when it goes on sale in 2010 in the U.S.—and should be far superior to the one on North American roads now.
The same melding will occur in the next size up: the Ford Fusion in North America and Mondeo in Europe will merge in size into a single model.
And the B-segment Ford Fiesta sedan and five-door, which is going on sale this year in Europe and China—it arrives stateside in 2010—is also of European descent. The lag time is necessary to ensure it meets all U.S. regulations as its sale here was not envisioned years ago when design work began.
Fiesta design began back in the days of affordable gasoline prices, when few Americans saw the need for small, fuel-miserly cars—a climate that has been turned on its ear to the extent that carmakers can’t make enough small vehicles with smaller-displacement engines, hybrids, and electric cars today.
Ford won’t just have the two body styles each of the Focus and Fiesta, it also promises a new Mercury small car in 2010 (defying the perception Mercury is on its deathbed), as well as a new so-called “whitespace” entry (we interpret this to mean a product in a new niche) for a total of six European small vehicles on sale here. Officials will not provide details on the mystery “whitespace” car other than to say it rides on a European small-car platform. Europe’s C-Max mini-minivan or the Kuga small crossover come to mind.
As expected, Ford uses its dismal second-quarter earnings release as a springboard to announce the next series of moves to transform from a company traditionally associated with trucks to one heavy with small cars and hybrid vehicles. Going forward, two thirds of product spending will be on cars and crossovers, compared with only half today, Fields says.
In the next five years, Ford says it will build more than 1 million vehicles a year, worldwide, from its global B-car platform and almost two million from the C-segment architecture.
The number of hybrids in the fleet will double when the 2010 Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan hybrid sedans go into production late this year for sale in 2009. To date, Ford only has the Ford Escape and Mercury Mariner hybrid SUVs. A third shift will be added in Kansas City this year to build all four hybrids.
