Oz Comp
Marton Pettendy3 Jan 2016
NEWS

Australian car company to watch in 2016

Ford has more to gain than lose as it morphs from car maker to importer

No Australian automotive brand has more to gain in 2016 than Ford, which lost more market share this year than any other mainstream car maker.

Ford will also be the first of the big three local makers to close its factory doors, on October 16, and will therefore be a valuable litmus test for the two that will follow it in 2017.

As the first Australian car maker to announce its demise, in 2013, Ford has had longer to develop its transition strategy from manufacturer to full-line importer than both Toyota and Holden.

Arguably, it's made a better fist of it, rolling out an aggressive 'attack' advertising campaign for its class-leading Ranger, highlighting its ongoing global vehicle development role within Ford and promising 20 new (imported) models by 2020.

Not that any of that boosted its sales fortunes in 2015, when Falcon sales continued their downward spiral to a new all-time low, the polished Fiesta and Focus small cars slipped to 10th in their respective sales races and Ford slipped to sixth overall with a paltry 6.1 per cent market share.

To November this year, every single Ford model has declined in popularity, except the almost non-existent EcoSport city-crossover and the Ranger 4x4, which was by far its biggest seller, accounting for about a third of all the marque’s sales.

As of last month, Ford had sold less than 65,000 vehicles in 2015 – less than Toyota, Mazda, Hyundai, Holden and even Mitsubishi, and narrowly more than Nissan and the fast-growing Volkswagen, Subaru and Honda brands.

Without the Ranger, Ford would have sold less than 38,000 vehicles with a month to go this year.

So the Blue Oval has plenty of ground to make up in its final year as a manufacturer, and also has less to lose than the remaining two, with the Territory and Falcon sedan contributing little more than 16,000 sales so far in 2015.

Of course, like Holden and Toyota, Ford also stands to lose plenty of government and other fleet sales when it loses its local manufacturer status, but again it should suffer less than its closest traditional rivals by virtue of its smaller volume base.

The upside is Ford launched a number of key volume models relatively late this year, all of which should bring home more bacon in 2016. They include the heavily upgraded Ranger, the all-new Everest SUV and, from early 2016, the upgraded Kuga and sold-out Mustang.

Ford's new Mondeo is also yet to fire but should be aided by feisty ST and frugal hybrid versions next year, while the Focus will gain a gob-smacking new performance flagship in the red-hot new Focus RS.

What Ford will replace its homegrown Territory with in the popular large SUV class remains top-secret, but with the new Edge and Explorer available to it, the Blue Oval should have all bases in the ballistic SUV sector covered.

Of course, that's not including the growing list of global vehicles designed and engineered at Ford's Asia Pacific Product Development Centre in Broadmeadows, its R&D office in Geelong – where Ford car-making dates back to 1925 — and its 50-year-old You Yangs Proving Ground in between at Lara.

While the T6 Ranger ute and Everest SUV are well-known products of Ford's Australian R&D capability, a host of other new global and regional models will be created from the ground up in Victoria but will never see the light of day in an Australian Ford dealership – just like India's Fiesta-based Figo and China's new Taurus and Focus-based Escort.

Sadly for blue-bloods, next year will also see the death of one of the Ford world's oldest surviving nameplates in the Falcon after 56 years of service. Let's hope the swansong XR Sprint models honour the company's unrivalled 91-year history of Australian car manufacturing.

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