It seems like a monumentally stupid decision, but I think there are folks at Ford who’d point to what FCA have been doing, and see that as a success. In their case, they capitalized on cheap gas, and pushed development of new Jeep and Ram products, and have subsequently reaped the benefits of high margin vehicles for the past few years. They killed their car line, and haven’t been hurt yet - in Ford’s mind, why wouldn’t it work for them?
What a lot of people seem to be ignoring is that Ford has a bunch of really, really old vehicles on their hands. Both the Fiesta and Focus date back to the late 00’s, and the Fusion has bones underneath it that are older than that. Facelifts and minor updates only hold off competition for so long, particularly when innovative designs are coming out of Korea and Japan every other year. They’ve basically decided to ceed all of these sales because they don’t want to run the risk of a low-margin effort not being very successful.
I don’t think Ford is dumb enough to not have an out (FCA has fallen in that hole), but I don’t think it’d be easy for them to dig out quickly if we had a massive fuel spike. Something like the Focus Active is basically a back door for a “regular” Focus being made available, but since fuel economy gains would be relatively minor, who knows if they’d ever make that kind of choice. White space vehicles leave a lot of room to rollback to “regular” designs as well, and depending on how they’re leveraging their fuel saving tech, we might not have a huge hurdle to jump if a spike came to pass.
How would I expect their lineup to change over the next few years?
We’ll, I’d imagine the Fiesta will be dropped in favor of a new EcoSport, and let’s hope we get a legitimate new one, as the one being released currently is already quite old, and lacks a lot of things compared to the competition to remain completely relative.
A Focus Active is a smart market choice, and I’ll openly admit that I actually like the idea of this car quite a bit. Fuel economy penalties are pretty small compared to the regular hatch, and, it has enough of the features needed to be class competitive once it shows up... soonish? The backdoor for a regular Focus will always be there, but it is a huge shame that we won’t be getting a new ST or RS in the future.
I’d imagine the Fusion gets replaced with something akin to the Subaru Legacy/Outback, and will likely try to crank some pressure down on the new all-wheel-drive Nissan Altima. As much as a new American wagon excites me, I don’t have confidence in an EcoBoost-powered competitor to have the kind of fuel economy needed to survive a big fuel spike. Still, I’d imagine they’re monitoring the situation with the Regal/TourX closely, as I’d imagine they’d mirror whatever Buick decides to do in the event of something major in the near future.
Lastly, I’d expect some major development dollars going into the next Escape (based on the new Focus), as well as the new Edge, and probably some kind of crossover to slot between the two. They’ve already announced an EV crossover, and I’d imagine some kind of hybrid effort can’t be far behind. Ford needs to really step up their game in the face of the newer efforts from GM, Hyundai, and Toyota, particularly when it comes to standard features, design, quality, and overall execution. They’ve gotta be a class leader in the same way they were coming into this decade, and I have to admit, I don’t have the highest level of confidence.
