[Casper]

The writer of the article is an idiot. He fails to take into account quite a few things. Evolution for one. When a model comes up for redesign, they don't always keep the name, even though the new car is by every means a successor:

The Escort was replaced with the Focus.
Aerostar-Windstar-Next minivan
Taurus-Fusion
Crown Victoria-Five Hundred

There was also the change to align the product naming with the new scheme (Cars start with F, SUV's start with E). Hence the demise of the Escort and Taurus names in favour of Focus, Fusion, Freestyle, Five Hundred. Its a clever marketing ploy to create alliteration so that the names roll off the tongue.

As for the Contour, it was, along with the Focus, an experiment. Nobody else had really brought over their Euro models and tried to sell them here (aside from the Merkurs in the 80's... that was lukewarm). The sport compact revolution was in place, and Ford wanted to see if they could cash in. Americans just cant accept a Euro American car (their loss). GM hasn't tried this... they only use Euro platforms, and put boring, crappy American bodies on them.

Other names are only resurrected for special, limited run models:
Ford GT
Thunderbird

As for anything Mercury... its now a US-only brand. It costs far too much to mantain a value-price lineup under a different marque... Ford, IMO, would be better to kill the brand completely, and simply add more trim levels to the existing Ford lineup.

Lincoln is a dying brand too. Its supposed to compete with Cadillac, but with lower quality, lower priced models. These vehicle are aimed at the Lexus-Infinity crowd. Aviator? Low sales, rebadged Explorer. Blackwood? Good attempt at cashing on in on the high truck sale volume. They found out the hard way that there isn't much demand for a luxury pickup.. people would rather spring for a King Ranch or a Harley Davidson edition F150.

In the end, there is little Ford can do to stem the losses. They're already doing better than GM, but they should also ditch Mercury, maybe Lincoln (or re-vamp it a la Cadillac) to cut costs. LESS marques is the key, not MORE like the GM menagerie. Who needs 3-4 nearly identical cars on the same platform (Cobalt/Pursuit/Ion). Bring the euro models to NA, but with some American styling cues... straight transplants don't work, but neither do NA-only models. American companies are used to paying too much to build cars stateside, and to have a larger profit margin built in to compensate. Japanese makers have perfected the art of low profit, high selling cars. Toyota and Honda make less than a grand on the Civic/Corolla/Yaris, but make up with it in volume, and customer satisfaction.

My 2c worth, at least.



PS: I've detailed, mechanic'd, and sold at car dealers before, and now I work in the leasing and financing of them (independant finance co, not business office). I was one of the first people to lobby Toyota for the Echo hactback back in 2001, years before they finally brought it over.... right when Honda killed the Civic hatch. I even suggested using the 1.5l, not the 1.0 or 1.3 used overseas....
I'm not talking out of my arse here.