Passenger car lineup may be culled soon.
After it was announced earlier this year that Ford intends to take an axe to its North American passenger car lineup (to great shock in the industry), it seems that Ford Europe is about to do the same thing. Following disappointing financial results from the first half of this year, the Blue Oval’s operations in Europe are about to experience a product ‘reboot’ to return the American brand to profitability.
In the first-half of 2018, Ford Europe has recoded a pretax loss of some US$73-million (or $98.75-million), with a full-year loss expected by analysts and brand executives alike. In comparison, last year Ford Europe enjoyed a US$88-million profit in the same timeframe last year.
“The low-performing part of our portfolio represents a majority of our volume, revenue, and capital deployed in the region.” — Bob Shanks, Chief Financial Officer, Ford Europe
Shanks continued and said that cars like the C-Max represented where Ford was losing most money, whereas the Kuga SUV, Transit van, and Ranger ute were selling profitably in the region, along with “selected imports” that we can only assume refers to the Edge SUV and Mustang sports car.
Autonews Europe also spoke to Ford’s global markets boss Jim Farley, who sad that a redesign of Ford’s business in Europe was necessary to ensure that they capitalised better on their profitable LCV & SUV business in the region. This is in direct opposite of the previous gameplan, perhaps most evident with the latest Fiesta & Focus: Both cars were introduced with a wide array of variants designed to appeal to every possible buyer, which has so far delivered “incremental profit” but “lower than planned.”
Back in April, Ford CEO Jim Hackett announced that he would be killing off all but Ford’s SUVs, trucks, and its Mustang & Focus Active in one of the most extensive ‘streamlining’ of product offerings we’ve seen in recent years. How the latest developments in Europe will affect Australia remains to be seen, though you can be sure that we’ll bring you more updates as they come.
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