The first step in fixing a problem is recognizing what the problem is in the first place. I think of all the major Detroit automakers it’s probably Ford that’s best at recognizing the problem, even if the company isn’t that close to a solution. Is Ford’s CEO the only one who gets it or is he being blinded by being too much of a gearhead?
Today’s installment of The Morning Dump is all about the future, even if all I’m thinking about is the Astros game against Detroit’s own Tigers that’s happening today. That one is going to be tough for me. I want the Astros to beat them but, at the same time, I recognize that the Tigers are a way better story.
It’s the same for Tesla and BYD in China. It looks like both companies had a great Q3 and I’m inclined towards an American company crushing overseas. Still, I want Tesla to re-focus on affordable products, which is where BYD shines. If Ford has a big future, how about the rest of the Detroit automakers? Well, Stellantis is having to recall almost all of its plug-in hybrid Jeeps and GM is still paying for its Cruise debacle. So not great.
Aight, I need to get a whole day’s worth of work done before the first pitch so let’s gooooooo.
Enthusiast Products Are ‘Our Business’
I’ve been thinking about writing ‘The Bull Case for Ford’ as a TMD for a while, premised on the automaker being in what I think might be the best position to win the future. Why don’t I? Whenever I get the idea in my head the company does another recall or releases another questionable product and I decide not to do it.
Looking broadly at what used to be Detroit’s Big 3 I think you’d have wanted to be Stellantis during the pandemic. Its costs were low, its products were cheap to make, and it made a ton of money. Right now I think you’d rather be General Motors, which has a diverse EV portfolio and is still making great trucks and profitable small crossovers. So why is the future shaped like a blue oval?
The last time I decided to write this post I was in England looking at a bunch of fast Fords that I grew up loving. Clearly, at the heart of this brand are some amazing and iconic cars. And then I walked over to the Ford Capri EV stand. I haven’t driven the Capri, but I’ve driven VW MEB-platform cars before, and they’re fine. One dressed up like a crossover with some cues borrowed from the vintage Capri just doesn’t do it for me.
Ford CEO Jim Farley did a big interview with Car Magazine at a launch for the new, MEB-based European Explorer and it’s giving me a little hope. I’m going to start with the bit that everyone seems to be paying attention to:
‘We’re getting out of the boring-car business and into the iconic-vehicle business,’ he tells me. ‘We’d always competed at the heart of the passenger-car market, which didn’t work out too well for Mondeo, Focus and Fiesta. They were loved by a lot of customers but they could never justify more capital allocation – unlike commercial vehicles.’
[..]
‘Ford never funded enthusiast products – they were always a side business. Now with Mustang, Raptor and Bronco, they’re our business,’ says Farley.
Having driven the Puma ST I agree that it’s a fun vehicle and not another boring crossover, though the fun versions don’t seem long for this world. The long-rumored Mustang Raptor also comes up, and Farley seems to hint that we’ll see it sooner rather than later, and that we’ll see more RS-badged cars. Farley also says that Ford can “take on Porsche” with the Mustang and that more money will be put into that brand, which sounds good.
The MEB bit has always bugged me, though. Ford has touted its skunkworks team that’s trying to develop a cheap electric platform to underpin the next generation of the company’s EVs, but is that just throwing ideas at the wall and waiting to see what sticks?
If there’s hopefulness to be drawn from this interview it’s in Farley’s quiet admission that the MEB play with Volkswagen was a short-term solution to the problem of getting an EV platform to Europe and that he understands that China and Tesla are the real competitors and that beating them requires a purely Ford-built solution:
‘If your bet is the digital experience as a differentiator, you can’t use someone else’s electric architecture. If I use MEB, then another architecture in China, one in North America and another for export, that’s multiple different software. Software that has to be written to the individual module for propulsion, braking, steering, seats. If [Ford] is very committed to digital differentiation, it’s impossible to have that complexity.
‘One of my biggest bets as CEO is our platforms, including our electric architectures. There will be places where we work with each other, such as MEB. But in the future that will be harder, not easier.’
The ‘No more boring cars’ line gets the headlines and I, too, couldn’t resist. But it’s the quote above that’s key. If an automaker is going to survive it needs more than a distinct brand identity for its products. If Ford wants to sell in any volume it needs a digital experience and a platform that are unique to Ford. It doesn’t really have that now. General Motors does in Ultium and we’ll see if the cheaper Equniox EV is a hit.
If there’s a bull case for Ford it’s that it’ll be able to develop a scalable and affordable platform that works like a Tesla and looks like a Ford. The bear case is that it’s super hard. It’s the hardest thing Ford has done in 120 years. I’m not sure it can pull it off, but unlike Stellantis or even Volkswagen, I can at least articulate what a future Ford looks like.
That’s not nothing.
Will Tesla Or BYD Sell More EVs In China In Q3?
You can never count out Tesla because it’s probably the most flexible large automaker in the world. It only makes a small number of products and it has enough of a war chest to throw crazy discounts and deals to make up volume whenever it wants.
China is Tesla’s most important market, and it’s also the most difficult place to be an electric carmaker. The competition is cutthroat, and the consumers are wary of spending money given all the lingering economic uncertainty. Tesla’s big ploy, in addition to price cuts, has been offering discounted insurance. So far it seems to be working.
Domestic automaker BYD has also been playing the discount game and was rewarded with a strong first half of the year. What BYD offers is a more diverse range of cars and super cheap EVs like the BYD Seagull, which has a nice interior and decent range for the price equivalent of a pack of Wrigley’s Doublemint gum (ok, about $10k, but not far off).
We’ll find out soon enough who was on top in BEV sales (BYD almost certainly sold more cars since it also sells hybrids), but there’s some early data to consider
According to CnEVPost, BYD sold a total of 164,956 passenger BEVs in September, an increase of 9.1% year-over-year. Its PHEVs were even more successful, reaching 252,647 vehicles in the month. In total, BYD sold 419,426 vehicles with a plug during the month. That brings the total BEV sales for BYD up to 443,426 units in Q3.
Now we’re just waiting on Tesla to report, though we know that the company is expected to sell more than 460,000 BEVs in Q3 globally.
Stellantis Recalling 194,000 Plug-In Jeep Hybrids
Earlier this month I wrote about an impending recall of Jeep PHEV vehicles that were catching on fire whilst parked. The recall is now coming.
From Reuters via Automotive News:
The Italian-American automaker is recalling some 2020 through 2024 model year Jeep Wrangler and 2022 through 2024 Jeep Grand Cherokee plug-in hybrids. The issue involves a battery component, the company said.
The Chrysler-parent company said the fires occurred when the vehicles were parked and turned off. It estimates 5 percent of affected vehicles might have the defect.
Stellantis said vehicle risk is reduced when the battery charge level is depleted and said owners are advised to refrain from recharging and should park away from structures or other vehicles. The company said a remedy is imminent.
I like the 4xe, and it’s been one of the brighter spots in a dim year for Stellantis, so this has to sting a bit.
GM Paying $1.5 Million Fine Over Lack Of Disclosure
Almost exactly a year ago a Cruise Robotaxi in San Francisco was out on duty when it was involved in an accident that resulted in the Cruise vehicle dragging a pedestrian 20 feet to the side of the road. This was obviously a big issue, made worse by Cruise’s decisions to withhold information from regulators, leading to its self-driving license being revoked, forcing it to temporarily shut down its taxi service, and seeing its executive team either leave or get fired.
Cruise’s vehicles are back on the road, but the company isn’t yet done with the fallout. From Reuters via the Detroit Free Press:
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said on Monday that General Motors’ self-driving car unit Cruise will pay a $1.5 million fine after it failed to disclose details of a serious October 2023 crash involving a pedestrian.
Under the settlement, Cruise must submit to NHTSA a corrective action plan on how it will improve its compliance with reporting of serious incidents and face enhanced reporting requirements for at least two years.
GM’s President Mark Reuss said it would take five years to win back trust, so just four years to go.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
Scottish producer/artist SOPHIE was amazing, and her tragic death is an incalculable loss to music. If you don’t know her, I suggest this profile/review of SOPHIE’s posthumously released self-titled album from our old colleague Jia Tolentino.
The Big Question
Can Ford do it?
If Ford could get their quality under control then many of their current products would be quite appealing. But they can’t so I’m not buying any or recommending them to anyone. But also they are a mainstream brand with large mainstream scale, so I’m not sure how they pretend they are gonna be like Porsche. But I’m all for making interesting (they use iconic here) cars, but my favorite iconic Fords are the hot hatches, sedans, and weirdos, SVT, ST, RS, SHO, SVO, etc…so seems they disagree and I’m out of luck.
How is it that there are TWO users with the same User name? (☉_☉)
Which one is Cage and which one is Travolta?
I’m Travolta! 😉 And I believe that I am the original “Shooting Brake”
That’s just what the fake Shooting Brake would say!
😉
I’m gonna need to see a greasy hair-off to determine…The eyebrows are only partially indicative.
Mr Farley may be a “car guy” who enjoys doing hot laps in the newest specially-prepped Mustang derivative, but that’s not what it takes to be a successful CEO.
I can’t think of anything more boring than a lineup of SUVs and Trucks. Does he propose getting rid of them? (One can hope)
You know what else is boring?
Recalls.
Recalls are Boring.
Meanwhile, “boring” cars have paid the bills for the Ford family for over a century.
People all over the world would be thrilled to be able to buy a nice, new, affordable Escort or Taurus – and Lincoln desperately needs a Continental (which were anything but boring ’till they became derivatives of Fairmonts and Tauruses) but Mr Farley cannot be bothered.
Sounds like Mr Farley would be happier being CEO of Porsche or Ferrari.
Good luck with that.
Cripes, how have I avoided seeing a Mach-E in profile? I’ve seen them around in real life! Damn that’s ugly. The X6 was a warning, people, not a guide.
Doesn’t seem like they have a VIN list yet for the 4XE recall. I think this is the 7th one I’ve seen come out in the year I’ve had mine.
Matt: for awareness, notifications are not working. 🙁
The top 25 vehicles by sales are not enthusiast vehicles. A couple may have variants like the Explorer ST.
Ford sold the Fiesta ST, Fusion Sport, and Taurus SHO until 2019 and the Focus ST until 2018, which means, until actually quite recently, Ford sold a non-boring/enthusiast oriented version of literally every car in their range
Of course, now, they only have one car in their range, anyway
Whenever I’ve tried to drive a Ford enthusiast car (SHO, Fiesta ST) that doesn’t start with an “M”, the sales staff has proven to have no freaking clue. It’s clear that management also doesn’t have a clue.
I made the mistake of going into a Ford dealership and asked to test-drive a Focus ST, I was told I’d have to have a credit check and hammer out a deal with the finance dept first.
Went to the VW dealer down the street, asked for a manual GTI test-drive, they made a copy of my driver’s license and tossed me the keys.
I still have the GTI.
“Enthusiast Products Are ‘Our Business”
If that was Lotus or Porsche saying that, I would believe it.
But Ford? Sorry… I’m calling bullshit on that given their biggest seller is the F150.
Also to make Ford an enthusiast-only vehicle company would basically kill their main business if they strictly followed those idiotic words. It’s clear it was said by someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
Who is the idiot at Ford who said that? Oh it was Jim Farley? Oh dear. The board might want to NOT renew his employment contract when it comes up.
“‘Ford never funded enthusiast products – they were always a side business. Now with Mustang, Raptor and Bronco, they’re our business,’ says Farley.”
Again… what the fuck is this idiot talking about. Ford has funded MANY enthusiast products over the years… but it’s always a side business in relation to their main business of selling mass-market cars and trucks.
Because that is what Ford has ALWAYS been about.
Did Farley get kicked in the head by a horse recently? Perhaps a Mustang?
Or is he suffering from dementia?
“Can Ford do it?”
It’s not a question of whether they could do it. The real question is whether they SHOULD.
And given that mass market work trucks and mass market daily driver vehicles are the main part of their business, they absolutely SHOULD NOT do that.
Ford is not a boutique automaker. They are a mass market automaker.
They absolutely can have some enthusiast vehicles… but for a company like Ford, it should never be their main business.
A little prospective on Mr Farley:
http://www.autoextremist.com/current/2023/2/5/a-giant-blue-oval-of-not-good.html
Are car lots full of greyscale crossovers boring? Asking for a CEO friend?
To be fair, they offer some real colors for the Mustang Mach-E.
I was thinking about most of the other manufactures.
We’d always competed at the heart of the passenger-car market, which didn’t work out too well for Mondeo, Focus and Fiesta.
Excuse me Mr. CEO MBA/Six Sigma BS lol but you should see the huge amount of Fusion, Focus and Fiesta driving around. Do you think that people will go back to Ford to trade their vehicle for a Bronco or a Mustang? They will probably head out to Toyota/Honda/Kia for their next vehicle. Yes cool cars will give your brand more value but you need to keep your plants busy building cars that actually move masses. Build the Maytag of vehicles, not the Samsung ones that look cool with gimmicks that don’t work.
This needs more stars. The Fusion is an iconic look that still holds up today, and they are EVERYWHERE!
I was shocked when they cancelled that car. At the time, it felt like every other car I’d see was a Fusion. It’s still not far off. My step mother just bought a used one a few months ago!
Ford needs a new CEO then. Whats lacking is QUALITY control. Toyota for years made utterly boring vehicles forever and people bought them, leading them to become the largest automaker in the world.
Get your quality taken care of… then work on the sheetmetal design.
The best part is that Farley has Toyota on his resume, but obviously learned nothing 🙁
Just to add to that, Toyota doesn’t even build most of its own ‘enthusiast’ vehicles, they’re contracted out to Subaru & BMW nowadays, or Yamaha a bit back (the current 3-cyl turbo GR Yaris/Corolla are the exception).
So if Ford wants to be like Toyota, it should actually be making the ‘boring’ cars.
I may be going out on a limb here but Ford’s strategy, just a little bit, reeks of Dodge’s strategy. They wanna cater to a niche and that doesn’t seem to be working out too well for the folks on the other side of town. You need to sell appliances. The only reason your appliances “didn’t work out” was because they were never as compelling as the Japanese appliances and/or the nameplate never had any cache. This is because American automakers never let their appliance nameplates hang around long enough to get into the lexicon. People have been able to buy an Accord since 1982 and know exactly what they’re getting. Everybody knows what a Honda Accord is. Half the people driving a Fusion don’t even know it. They just know they have some Ford four door.
Ford didn’t, but you could buy an Impala for like 60 years.
And of course the domestics are excellent at making and branding boring trucks.
Yes, there are exceptions, but you could also buy a Cavalier for 23 years, which was great. Then for all of 5 years you could buy a Cobalt, and then a Cruze for 9 years. I’m going off Wikipedia here so my math may be a bit fuzzy, but you get the point.
Who are these mythical people who thought a Cavalier was “great”?? Maybe compared to walking..?
That’s an out of context take, but ok. Nobody ever said the Cavalier itself was great.
This. Detroit has never put lasting effort into their non-truck products. Honda messes up the Accord a bit, or a version of the Camry misses the mark, and both companies fix the issues to keep the value of the brand intact. Imagine if Ford or Chevy had put the same effort into its midsize sedans as they have with their fullsize pickups.
Case in point
Wordsalad here. But expected.
Same as it ever was.
Like you said I think Ford is good at identifying their problems, but are they good at solving them? Kinda, slowly. I think where Farley is coming from is that their buzzy and successful new vehicles in the last few years have been ones where they seemed reluctant to put production effort up to scale until they knew how big the market was. Between the Bronco, Bronco Sport and Maverick alone they know they can make interesting products people want to buy.
Stellantis is making an absolute pigs ear of its Takata airbag recall in France and rest of Europe. Expect more BBQ jeep stories…
Iconic is great, but compelling and reliable is better.
I think Ford needs to focus on making compelling products. They have some hits (F150, Maverick, Bronco(s), Mustang) and some less than compelling products (Escape, Ranger (sans the Raptor), Edge).
Outside of making clever products (and selling cars that have their own niche), they ought to really dial in the reliability. The Powershift DCTs, the 3 cyl EB wet timing belt, the Cam Phasers on the 3.5 EB, CV axles on the Maverick and BS are unacceptable. Even their engines that are supposedly bulletproof have some ridiculous issues (3.5 NA engine that, when the water pump breaks, dumps coolant into the oil pan comes to mind).
Ford needs to take ‘Quality is Job One’ back.
It’s currently a joke—even a meme.
Quality is Job None
No. You can be a bespoke, interesting, small-volume maker – like Ineos or Lotus – or you can use well-developed technology to make highly-reliable cars, like Toyota, or you can put flagship/cutting-edge tech on the pricy end of the model range and then let it trickle its way down (BMW, Mercedes). And in Europe, BMW sells plenty of “boring” cars.
You’ll note that unless you want to be an afterthought, you have to capture the boring car market. I remember when Ford won various “Car of the Year” prizes for the Taurus back in the 1990’s, and the Taurus was the epitome of mundane. It simply excelled at it, like mac-and-cheese or properly buttered toast.
You cannot compete with GM – let alone Toyota/Lexus – selling solely iconic cars. Particularly if you’re Ford, burdened with legacy costs and the need to amortize any new development costs across multiple model lines and many years of actual production. That means volume is necessary, which means mass appeal, which – say it with me again – is congruent with ‘boring.’
And realistically, it’s already too late. I can tell something is a 90s-era Bronco or Explorer from a quarter mile today. Line up a 2024 Ford crossover against some of its competitors in a parking lot and I’d likely have to be within spitting distance to tell it’s a Ford. The Bronco is neat, but Ford cannot survive on being ‘iconic.’
Can’t argue, Ford’s ’80s – ’90s product, love or hate it, was distinctive. They also cultivated strong brand styling cues that were consistent over time.
Yeah, I sorta miss the era when ‘trade dress’ and ‘design language’ were actually aesthetically pleasing. I can tell a vehicle is a Toyota or – god save my soul – a Jeep just by looking in my rearview mirror and seeing the grille and headlight arrangement. BMW, despite the loathing Bangle got, was distinctive. Ford products in the 90s were workmanlike but also offered – and I think this is where everybody that wants to move upmarket forgets things – relevant items for all market segments. That immensely increases your upsell potential. Like, say you get mom’s used 1991 Ford Taurus as your high school car in 1999.
You graduate college 6 years later and like coffee, so you – of course – buy a Ford Mustang in 2006. Later on, when the family comes, you get a Ford Windstar as the people-hauler and an F-150 as your personal work truck and keep the Mustang around because you like to keep a handle on your youth.
In this era of nothing-but-crossovers, though, like – where’s the model line progression? Does a16yo new driver need something iconic? What about low-income young adults who want something no-frills and reliable? Is Ford simply going to cede that market to Kia/Hyundai and Toyota and Honda, with the likely outcome that all the potential new drivers with any semblance of brand loyalty will shift to those brands down the road?
Yes, the F150 in XL, XLT, STX, Lariat, King Ranch, and Platinum trims is such an exciting and non-boring product from the bottom to the top of the gingerbread lane. /s There is nothing as boring as a good tool for the job. There’s also absolutely nothing wrong with boring as long as it does the job at a good value with zero hassle. Farley used to work at Toyota, is he not aware of the Camry and Corolla? Toyota doesn’t lose money on them. He needs to stop shilling his sound bites and actually improve the product and maybe sell stuff people want to buy (instead of just “needing” to buy.). As beloved as the Mustang is, at the volumes it sells at and the (non-shared) costs it incurs as a standalone platform it’s nothing more than a necessary vanity project, certainly not a big moneymaker for Ford.
Ford (like VW) needs to up up their quality, both are keeping people away by having issue after issue, never improving. The Focus and Fiesta PowerShift debacle were complete self-owns, Fusion, well, if you can’t make money selling close to 200k of something while building it in Mexico and supposedly sharing the design with the European version for additional volume you’re doing something very wrong. Kind of hard to be successful when half the market decides to not even consider the product due to not wanting to get burned. Creating products for Ford by using VW of all things underneath doesn’t seem to be any kind of winning formula.
We keep hearing about this “skunkworks”, the whole point of which is to come up with something that nobody expects and surprises everyone. It seems doomed to failure with every mention of it and expectations will likely exceed whatever the reality will be. Farley would have been better off keeping quiet about it rather than announcing to everyone (and his competition) what he is up to. But that wouldn’t boost the stock price temporarily of course.
Ford Escape RS with a manual, lets go, Mr. Farley.
Manual Ford Maverick too!!!
And Bronco Sport Raptor with the Focus RS drivetrain, but beefed up.
Be still, my heart….
Maverick Lobo is a tiny, baby step in the right direction. Hopefully, they keep following the path to genuine enthusiast vehicles on that platform.
We’re getting out of the boring-car business and into the iconic-vehicle business
I notice he didn’t say iconic “car”. He said “vehicle”. So, enthusiast stuff as long as you’re enthusiastic about trucks and SUVs. Or I guess Mustangs, too.
Is non-boring cars Job #1 now or is it still quality? It gets confusing and hard to recall. Oh wait, it’s Ford: recalls are Job #1. Ford should strive to be more like Ronald Reagan in an Iran Contra hearing.
Going after Porsche?
Are they trying to play the little guy going after the giant? Ford sells almost 50k Mustangs per year (plus another 40k Mach-e), while Porsche sells like 12k 911s.
If they want to go after someone selling sedans, there are much larger targets than Porsche to set their sights on.
maybe alluding to a macan competitor like an escape/broncosport platform based SVT or lincoln something?
They sell 4x as many Edges as Porsche does Macans.
Bronco, Bronco Sport, Edge and Escape sell 480k / year. That’s 6x Porsche’s annual volume for all vehicles.
It just seems like Porsche is a weird target for a company like Ford.
I’d imagine he wants both markets. The broad huge one and the high performance high margin low volume ones.
They already have plenty of high volume high margin models. Those luxury-appointed pickups have plenty of profit built into that selling price.
I would be so much more excited if they just announced a simple mass market vehicle that may be the next major thing. This is Ford. They made the Taurus that defined a segment. Then the Explorer – same thing. We’re still dealing with the fallout from that last one.
A Porsche-fighting SVT whatever will barely show up on Ford’s financial reports and will not change the public perception of Ford in any major way.
I think the reference is to the Ford Mustang GTD- which is looking like it’s going to be a 911 GT3/GT2 killer, with a price tag to match.
Is that really a new thing for them? They have often offered a racecar version of the Mustang back to the Shelby cars, Cobra R and probably a dozen differently named ones since.
I don’t doubt that Ford has the right long-term goal here (occupy a niche where it’s strong), but the trick is keeping the operation running/profitable long enough to get there. I suspect a big part of that will be lobbying the government in various ways to keep its truck profits high.
“Icon cars are cool, but Ford has contracts to keep over a dozen plants and their autoworkers busy. That requires selling a couple million vehicles a year, and all those “Icon” vehicles don’t even keep two plants busy…
That’s where the sub-brands come in. The Bronco is the Icon car, but the Bronco Sport is the seller. The (alleged) four door Mustang may be intended to complement the two door Mustang the same way.
Go ‘Stros!
This is extremely easy to say when every expensive EV venture and skunkworks SVT project is underlaid by profits from millions of boring F series trucks every year.
I agree that Ford is well positioned for the future, if only because they have those truck profits to fall back on, and presumably always will (as long as ICE bans don’t actually take effect).
He probably means the fusion right?
Yeah, a truly bold CEO would name the boring products while they’re still in production.
This is wimpy, like Motor Trend calling every new car awesome until the next generation comes out and they finally tell you in great detail how bad the old one was by comparison.
He named their other previous cars, so I don’t think he intentionally neglected to mention the Fusion. Just had the others come to mind first.
The last Fusion was twinned with the last Mondeo, same car.
That answers that then.
Literally from it’s inception the Ford Motor company was built on boring cars.
Boring cars that BECAME icons.
Cars that, relative to what was available in their respective eras were very affordable, comparatively cheap to run and were reliable (to the standard of the time)
Everything else was funded on the strength of moving units of things people (and fleets) would actually lay money down on