Ford is a lazy company. It will never anticipate a market segment except for the lone time it ventured into creating the pony-car segment from the Mustang. That one moment in time was remarkable because the company deployed the then most market tested car ever, the Edsel, and picked a time during the national economic downturn in the late 1950's. And instead of improving the car and taking it into a direction where it could showcase its wares, the company pulled the plug early in 1960.
Edsel was never meant to be a one car effort. It really wasn't a Ford since it was supposed to be slotted above Mercury where it would almost be a Lincoln, but not quite. A little known fact is the Mercury Comet was slated to be an Edsel in 1960 and was pulled so quickly that virtually nothing was changed other than the badging.
The problem with Ford after the 1960's was that it wouldn't spend the money to make Mercury more than a Ford in a dress; as the 1970's rolled along, Mercury became a Ford with a bit of different styling but shared so much with Ford that ultimately Ford pulled the plug rather than to give Mercury its own identity. So Ford cowardly sank Mercury and then did an idiotic thing by making Ford into Mercury and pushing its price points through the roof and virtually abandoned the low priced segment.
Those who know the history of Ford is that this division was intentionally low rent - it was to capture customers who would then move up to Mercury as they aged and then into Lincoln as they prospered.
The cowardly killing of Mercury signaled that Ford is really the division that was murdered and Fords became Mercury and Ford abandoned appealing to regular working people who didn't want fancy and only had a limited budget. So Ford is really a pathetic company. It saw its only option as to rebadge a Ford to compete in the very same segment as a Mercury with a higher price and not so much of a value proposition - and Mercury had been raped for so long that no one could remember Mercury was supposed to be more than just a retrimmed Ford. Mercury had a purpose and it did work well from the 1950's to the 1960's. It was the strangulation of the brand from 1972 onwards that ultimately killed the prestige of the brand. Maybe Ford wasn't a coward here - maybe they were guilt of Munchhausen by Proxy and intentionally inflicted damage while whining the brand was sinking.
Ford has had some half-assed efforts - cheaply developed and supported by pulling the product off life support and then whining that the market had left them. Falcon, Maverick, Granada, Pinto, and Thunderbird are notorious examples of half-assed efforts that sank the nameplates (Falcon lived on in the land of Kangaroos because Ford actually built a great product and kept improving it). Each product that Ford introduced here in name was a good idea to start, but executiion was remarkably obtuse. Had Ford spent $100 on some or $200 on others, the cars could have been class best and remarkable. Instead Ford never spent the needed money and just coasted while the products sold well only to sink from being unimproved in their later years.
Another classic Ford cowardly action was the Ford Ranger. Released as a remarkable now-developed in North America as a compact pickup, it was a tough miniature F-Series that just worked and was dependable. But Ford really didn't do much to improve the product overall save for some cosmetic upgrades, but it really never did a total refresh in North America and allowed the product to strangle to death until it could no longer meet crash test ratings and it was canned. Cowards!
Another interesting Ford Fubar moment was the situation of the minivan - which actually had its roots at Ford during the middle 1970's - Lee Iaccoca and his band of merry men knew that Ford had worked out much of the difficult points and took that concept to Chrysler when Iaccoca was fired from Ford and was brought onboard the Chrysler Titanic. The minivan thus helped to save Chrysler when it launched it and Ford was left playing catch up with a moronic minivan built off the Ranger platform and it was heavy and fuel inefficient. It was tall and it was not sexy. But it did sell fairly well but Ford never went far with it and abandoned it to a front drive version built off the Taurus platform that ultimately was constantly playing catch up with Chrysler. Instead of innovating, Ford played it safe. And it never was a success and ultimately was canned because it was a mediocre piece of shit that never was more than a Chrysler but a version of one from three years ago. Even the morons from the Duh sisters, Hon and Toyo, finally got their act together to build copies of Chrysler's products questionable differences, but they were made by the Duh sisters, and these idiots ate them up like the shit cakes they were.
So now we have Ford killing off most of its cars. Yes, car sales are down, but there are companies with balls who continue to make them. These makers are intent on stealing the segment for them and allowing cowards like Ford to abandon the market - and the sales that were given up on - in the case of Fusion, Ford is abandoning 200,000 units per year because they can't build a car that is competitive even though it sells well overseas. Hell, even Buick sells bastards as Buick in America and never innovates anything here - you can rest assure that if it has a Buick nameplate in the USA, it is not a Buick at all - it is built and sold elsewhere as something else and is rebadged as a Buick for sale here.
I understand profitability - you must be solvent to continue to sell things (unless you are Tesla and being profitable has no bearing on your business plan). Over at VW and Toyoduh, they have common automotive platforms that underpin their new car so development costs are spread over three nameplates at a minimum. Then the cosmetics are changed with different upper structures and still Toyoduh can compete (well, when you build the ugliest shit on the planet, you are appealing to the blind and stupid and there is evidently a remarkable number of them who actually buy cars and drive them).
I'm calling out Ford because they are lazy and foolish and cowardly. They have developed the original Taurus using the Truck strategy of being best in class, but Ford abandoned that system that caused the Taurus to be the best selling car in America and decided it was too much work and it cost too much to build the best.
Having worked for Dave Thomas at Wendy's and having actually met him and learned from him as a budding manager working my way up to a General Manager of a training store, I can say that you don't compromise on your core items and you keep things simple; sadly Wendy's is not very good these days because they do too much which waters down their goodness on core items. Perhaps Ford should have pared down their cars to Focus and Fusion and Mustang, and then offered low priced options at all nameplates to give entry level people something to purchase. Focus and Fusion could have shared the same platform - one short wheel base and the other a longer one. Development would have been spread over two nameplates and the international versions would spread development costs further. Interestingly this idiot company still builds the Fiesta, Focus, and Fusion (as Mondeo) overseas. So this company has actually caused development costs for those vehicles to increase instead of sharing with America!
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