Ford: Back in Black

Like You Know Who, Ford is Back in the Black

(Image Credits: arcona.files.wordpress.com)

After reporting last week that Ford will cease being irrational and start selling the European-market Focus in the United States, I was literally beside myself with joy when I read that Ford has just turned over $1bn in profit in the third quarter. This is easily one of the greatest return from death stories since Lazarus walked out of the tomb or Neil Patrick Harris got a hit show again. Okay, maybe Doogie isn't back, but Ford has all the marks of a patient set to make a full recovery.
Like many headlines drawn from statistics, the devil is in the details. Yes, Ford has brought in more than it spent. However, it still has serious debts issues and will need to renegotiate with the UAW to be competitive with GM and Chrysler LLC in the long run. Also, Ford saying that it will be "solidly profitable in 2011" is as meaningless as worthless as the Zimbabwean dollar. If everything stays as it is right now (here's an insider tip: it won't) then Ford will be fully in the black. Something tells me there are some potholes and an injury or two up the road. All the same, let's celebrate the first solid application of polish to what had been one of the more tarnished names in the automotive field. Ford is proof positive that when a business is actually managed, rather than simply taken advantage of and its capital reserves of history squandered, it will succeed. Funny thing, that.

Ford Focus: Signs of Intelligent Life in the Automotive Universe

One World. One Focus.

(Image Credits: Autocar Magazine Online)

The FI faithful will be familiar with the fact that Ford is a favorite tackling dummy of mine. I have written a couple of times times (at least) in the past about how, inexplicably, Ford wanted to sell two different versions of the Focus; one for the American market, and one for the European market. Granted, Europeans, particularly the British, have different tastes. But if a car is such a dynamite success, why mess with the formula? It's at best patronizing, at worst insulting, to suggest that American tastes run so different to European ones that an entirely different version of the same car is necessary. It's not like "good driving dynamics" and "highly efficient powertrains" don't translate.
Well, Ford has pulled the soapbox from underneath me. SETI can stop directing its antennas at Detroit because we've found sentience. There will be one Focus in the next generation; it will return to being a "world car." Let's applaud a sensible business decision from a company that, despite the competition, has made a series of them. Not to lay too much pressure on "the little Focus that could," but this could be exactly the sort of decision that pushes Ford back to the forefront. It could bring the world closer together, make trees dance, and squirrels sing. Okay, maybe it was just a good move.

My Auto Company Bail-Out Plan: Sell the Focus RS

The Future of Ford: Currently on Sale in the UK
(Image Credits: Ford of Europe, UK)

TO: President Barack Obama, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC.

Dear Sir,

Call me old-fashioned, but back in the day car companies sold cars. Trouble is, somewhere along the line the business-types became more important than the engineers and political infighting superseded common sense. My favorite (most recent) example of this has to be the Ford Focus. I've written previously about how there are two Foci out there in the world. Here is the current American model; here is the current European (UK market) model.

Now I'm sure, Mr. President, that you will have particular thoughts on this based on your geography, but which would you rather own? The trouble with it is that you cannot, and will never have, a choice. Ford is actually two (three if you count Australia) separate companies with two (three) separate design offices with two (three?) separate design languages. Actually, it looks--much like their accents--that the Australians and English stay closer to one another than to the American language. A sensible mind would say, "wait a second, why build two of the same type of car?" The trouble is that sensible people only earn pink slips in the auto industry.

In the last episode of Top Gear (12 July), Jeremy Clarkson had a whacking great time in the new Focus RS. Here's a thought: an affordable, practical, 3-door hatchback with 300 horsepower, a high-tech differential, Bluetooth connectivity all for the equivalent price of about a Volkswagen R32 or Audi A3. Sounds like the kind of car that Ford needs to be selling, doesn't it? Problem is, they won't. Instead, America will get that exciting, Dodge Avenger-esque styling. Boy, doesn't THAT send your pulse racing.

The trouble is that American automakers have been so busy fighting amongst themselves that they haven't realized a couple of important points. The first is that none of them have styled something original since the Dodge Viper; and even that was a tarted up modern Shelby Cobra. Hence, nothing fresh is entering the American design aesthetic. Furthermore, Ford of American remains insistent that the European division can't possibly design a car for the American market because it is so "different." Yet, all this time, Honda, Toyota, and VW seem to be able to design cars for us "different" Americans. The second is that we, as consumers, have spoken with our silence. By not buying the droll, beige, generic cars rolling off Detroit production lines we've made quite clear that whatever they're selling we'll have no part of. When, all this time, our European cousins have been living it up, driving the Fords we should have had all along.

So, Mr. President, if I may respectfully offer my advice, if I were your 'car czar' my bail-out plan would be to bring things back to basics. Have the car companies sell the great cars that they are already building in America. Champagne would fall from the heavens, brands would be born again; that which was old would be made new. The Focus RS is either, sir, a vision of the future or another painful example of corporate-consumer disconnection.

Respectfully Yours,

Fuel Interjected