Hi, Guest
05-25-2005, 02:13 AM
Well, speaking as a Focus owner who was looking at the car more as a more economical way to get around that wasn't overly complicated or boring I can say that Focus does meet that need for me.
I do realize how Ford has essentially neutered the car, compared to how the car was when it was first introduced, turning it into the "rental fleet special" while at the same time hopefully making the required strides in reliability that will salvage at least some of the brands good name in NA.
However, playing Devil's advocate for a minute here, remember that in the U.S. at least that Ford has to deal with the issue of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy number for their entire fleet and they need to sell as many economical Focus as they can to counteract all those SUV's, trucks & Mustangs that guzzle gas.
So IOW Ford needs to push the Focus as their "bread and butter sedan" and a move upmarket would leave them with nothing to sell at the low end, unless they pull a GM and grab some lower end Mazda model to push in its place.
Even GM's strategy going from the Cavelier to the Cobalt and moving the Cobalt upmarket isn't working out as GM intended, at least locally they're already pushing Cobalt's that were similarly equipped to the last Caveliers for '05 at only 2K more per unit, hardly upmarket by any strech.
NefCanuck
I do realize how Ford has essentially neutered the car, compared to how the car was when it was first introduced, turning it into the "rental fleet special" while at the same time hopefully making the required strides in reliability that will salvage at least some of the brands good name in NA.
However, playing Devil's advocate for a minute here, remember that in the U.S. at least that Ford has to deal with the issue of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy number for their entire fleet and they need to sell as many economical Focus as they can to counteract all those SUV's, trucks & Mustangs that guzzle gas.
So IOW Ford needs to push the Focus as their "bread and butter sedan" and a move upmarket would leave them with nothing to sell at the low end, unless they pull a GM and grab some lower end Mazda model to push in its place.
Even GM's strategy going from the Cavelier to the Cobalt and moving the Cobalt upmarket isn't working out as GM intended, at least locally they're already pushing Cobalt's that were similarly equipped to the last Caveliers for '05 at only 2K more per unit, hardly upmarket by any strech.
NefCanuck