Go Further?

The Ford Motor Company has gone batsh--.

Ford just announced that it will no longer make and sell passenger cars in the United States and Canada, except for the Mustang.  Even though the company made a profit in the first quarter of 2018, the profits have mostly come from SUVs and crossovers.  Ford hatchbacks and sedans have lost so much market share in their respective segments that the company has decided to kill off all of them rather than discontinue some of them and replace others.  Ford doesn't want to keep any of these cars as loss leaders while the SUVs and crossovers make money because the profit margins wouldn't be as big.

Ford didn't so much kill these cars as let them wither on the vine.  Once these models went on sale, Ford didn't bother to freshen or improve them.  The Fusion is a competent car but is regarded as somewhat bland, and despite the popularity of the Focus in Europe, it's not as good or as competitive against Japanese makes and the Chevrolet Cruze. The Fiesta (shown above)?  If there's anyone left who buys subcompacts in These States or the Great White North, they're more likely to go to their Honda dealer for a Fit.  My mother's Fit, which I occasionally drive, is dull, but it's extremely versatile and incredibly efficient.  The Fiesta simply couldn't give the same value for money, even though I've been told that the Fiesta ST is a blast to drive.      

If traditional cars had a bigger share of the North American market, Ford might have considered re-investing in its car line, but with cars accounting for less than a third of the vehicles sold in the New World, Ford saw no incentive.  I still say that this is an insane move and one that will come back to bite the company in its proverbial rear end.  Not everyone wants an SUV, a crossover, or a pickup truck.  The only reason SUVs are so popular in the first place is because advertising agencies have suckered impressionable consumers into thinking that they're chic, powerful, and formidable vehicles, fortresses on wheels. They're really pretentious station wagons, supported by crude platforms and notoriously uneconomical when it comes to fuel consumption.  And to respond to the inevitable counterpoint that SUVs are more fuel-efficient these days and come in a variety of sizes - some of them based on traditional car platforms - to cater to customers who may not like a traditional SUV on a light-truck chassis, I would point out that all SUVs and crossovers, no matter their engines and dimensions, have higher ground clearances that offer degraded handling and make them difficult to drive, and many of them are so bulky they're subject to heavy cross winds that are hard to drive through.

And, they're ugly.

I don't want only big ugly wagons to choose from when I have to buy a new car.

And face it, the bigger the SUV, the better in the eyes of SUV customers.  They love the sense of superiority they get from driving at a high perch in such monstrous vehicles, made possible by a loophole in the corporate average fuel economy requirements that exempted light-truck platforms from higher standards, a loophole Detroit exploited after it tried to compete against the Japanese in the traditional-car market segments in the 1980s and demonstrated its inability to do so.  All we need is one big oil crisis - which could happen as soon as John Bolton makes Iran glow in the dark - to kill the SUV market (and Ford) overnight.

Incidentally, that wouldn't be the first time that Ford got screwed by spiking oil prices.  When the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973 caused the first big oil crisis, Henry Ford II, who was then chairman of his family's company, refused to follow GM's lead and make smaller cars, ignoring the advice of his company president, a guy named Lee Iaccoca, who would later become CEO of Chrysler and save the company by banking on - you guessed it - smaller cars.  (Iaccoca would later make mistakes that again put the company on the edge of going the way of Studebaker, but that's another story.)  Ford eventually had to catch up with GM and was still trying to do so when the Shah of Iran was overthrown and another oil crisis resulted.       

Fortunately, GM isn't so foolish this time, either.  Mary Barra, GM's current CEO, says her company still recognizes the value of the traditional-car market segment, and she has made it clear that sedans and hatchbacks will still be available even as GM continues to compete aggressively in the SUV/crossover market.  Volkswagen, meanwhile, has recommitted itself to the North American car market with its new Jetta even as it pushes its new Tiguan and Atlas SUVs.  And Toyota has brought a hatchback back to its long-running Corolla lineup in the States.  But I can't help but wonder if GM, Volkswagen and Toyota are merely offering a temporary reprieve for us fans of traditional cars.  Because a fear I voiced awhile ago on this blog seems to be coming true - either we drive around in big ugly wagons or we take the bus.

When America needs a bad idea like that, Ford will put it on wheels.