[taiyeungjai]

bluetoy,May 23 2005, 12:34 PM Wrote:The thing is that Ford doesn't concern themselves with the Sport compact "scene" Ford is a numbers company plain and simple. They sell plenty of Focuses. That's all you see. If they lose 5-10,000 sales to SRT-4 etc they don't care. They sell 50 billion Focuses to people looking for a cheap car. That's what Focus is in North America, It's a cheap entry level car. Why spend billions of dollars retooling factories to build a new Focus when the old one still sells all they can build.
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It isn't just about the numbers. Even if we ignore all of the performance variations, we must still look at the current platform and all of its inherent problems. If the C1 can remedy this and upgrade the reliability and refinement of the line, then they have more firepower to sway customers through the door. With import vehicles being more and more refined and built light years better, it will be easy to forecast what will happen. If you stay in the same place, you will get trampled by others. Haven't they learnt the hard way after offshore competitors have indirectly caused where they sit today?