Nuke the Taurus

[Josh Painter]

IMO, he's Barking up the right tree here:

So here’s what you need to do, Ford. Kill the Taurus. If you have to nuke it from space, do it. It’s an anchor that is damaging the perception of your whole brand.

You need a halo sedan. See that big 302 engine that you’ve got stuffed under the hood of the Mustang? Put it in a big, RWD sedan. Don’t make the same mistake Chevy made with the SS—make it look mean. That grille you put on the 2013 Flex? That’s a good place to start. Make twenty inch rims and summer tires an option. Put a real suspension in it. Price it competitively with the Charger SRT-8.

Then, build down from there. Put an EcoBoost sixer in the next model down and price it next to the Pentastar Mopars. Maybe even a four-cylinder EcoBoost for an entry level. In fact, just swap over the entire Mustang engine lineup. It works for Dodge with the Charger and Challenger. It could work for you, too.

Here’s the last thing you have to do, and this is critical. KEEP THE LINCOLN BADGE AS FAR AWAY FROM IT AS POSSIBLE. Face it—Ford is a more prestigious brand than Lincoln is. Make the top trim level a Titanium Ford, and stick a giant blue oval on the back. Hell, go crazy and put the Shelby GT500 engine in an SVT model and embarrass some M5s around the track.

What should you call it? Come on, do you really have to ask? Retro is in. You’ve got a name in the history books begging to be resuscitated. We haven’t seen one in forty years…it’s time.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you…the 2016 Ford Galaxie. Stick this one on top of the new World Trade Center. And you don’t have to pay me a dime when it becomes the top selling car in the segment, guys. I’ll just be glad to buy one.

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2014/04/barks-bites-the-best-car-at-nyiasin-2015/#more-810034

I do disagree with the name, though. Ford has or recently had a minivan by that name in Asia or Europe. Hey, why not call it the "Falcon"? FoMoCo would never do that in the U.S., since Falcon was the name for an entry-level model decades ago. Would be a nice salute to Ford Australia though. Especially now that the guys in Detroit aren't going to let the guys in Broadmeadows build cars any longer...

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[Twin Turbo]

Yes, sadly Ford of Europe sullied the name by using Galaxy ("Y" not an "IE") on a 7 seat MPV.

Your new Escape is also our Kuga (not quite the Mustang based luxury pony car I wish it was!).

However, the idea of a RWD Ford halo sedan has been suggested for a long time and, yes, Ford should build it. Call it Galaxie. Call it Falcon. Call it what you like. JUST BUILD IT!

 

[C00KIE M0NSTER]

Kill the Falcon, replace it with the next-gen Taurus, then kill the Taurus and build a new RWD large sedan from the ground up just to compete with Chrysler using decades old Mercedes chassis. Sounds brilliant.

 

[crysalis_01]

It seems painfully obvious that it should/would be called, Torino.

 

[Falc'man]

Isn't next Taurus cd4+3? Basically an inflated Fusion.

 

[Twin Turbo]

Isn't next Taurus cd4+3? Basically an inflated Fusion.

By all accounts, yes. So our RWD sedan dreams are just that. Dreams :(

 

[wproctor411]

I couldn't resist....the pinkley Taurus skit...a bob and tom classic.

 

[S550Boss]

This is a big problem for Ford. It just isn't selling. March sales of 5689 were down 18.8% from March a year ago. And year-to-date sales of only 12,309 were down 27.5%. This isn't counting the Taurus cop car, which sold 887 in March, down 4.2% from last March.

Why isn't the Taurus selling? Is it too large, too dated, poorly styled, or all the above? Shouldn't it be selling at least 100k units a year (the Fusion is headed to 300k in just North America and it's about to finally go worldwide). How will Ford fix this problem?

First consider all the other products based on the shared Taurus platform, where platform sharing lowers engineering, assembly, and service costs considerably. Those are the Explorer, both Police Interceptors, the Flex, the MKS, and the MKT. The Explorer sold 17k units in March, and is heading to 160K units for the year. That's a success - meaning the at least the Explorer is working for people now (although it's sold considerably higher in the past, when Ford only had one SUV to offer).

Speaking of the MKS, we've already seen the spy shots of an enlarged Fusion that is the basis for the next one (and the next Taurus). It sold 1034 units in March, up 11.9%. It is, however, year-to-year down 11.4%.

For a next-gen Explorer, as much as we'd like to (emotionally) see the new Everest over here, it's not built here and import duties would hurt the sales, so you need to "throw in" a new plant. And while we know it's a Ranger underneath (as the last US Ranger was the basis for the original Explorer), there is no plan to build the Ranger here (which would suck profit from the cash cow F series), so that kills US manufacturing. And the police are loving their Explorers too (do they know it's existence in it's current form is coming to a close?).

So, leaving emotion out of it (as much as we'd like to see a RWD sedan, especially given this week's Chevy SS revelation - keeping in mind that Chevy SS production irrevocably drops dead in 2015), if the Taurus were to be built on S550 it'd have to sell 48k units/year just to match the lousy record of the current Taurus (and that's a sales #s match; the investment #s would be very different since the Taurus is a shared platform for a large family of products and it's current engineering and manufacturing investment is already paid off). Could a RWD-based sedan do that, especially given that a good percentage of Tauri in wet and snow climates are sold with AWD? It's very hard to believe.

Setting aside the AWD question for a moment, a next-gen Taurus could technically share the S550 platform (although the interior dimensions would be worse than a Fusion). So it's possible... except that now you have to factor market replacements for the MKS, Flex (maybe), Explorer, MKT. Ok, those could be built on the S550 too, although they'd be very much different products from what they are now. How would a RWD-based (and biased) platform address the very different market and demographics for these other products? It wouldn't.

Taking this hypothetical RWD-based platform further, you have to factor in the requirement of an AWD option. That's an engineering question that S550 wasn't designed to support. Why? Because it's engine, transmission, and steering placement are all S197. And it's engine compartment, firewall, and front floorpan were only evolved enough from the S197 to support manufacturing in both right- and left-hand drive.

Last February 2013, Ford announced that AWD sales in cars and SUVs grew 72% since 2009, outpacing the industry growth of 53%. Score for Ford. 37% of these vehicles that are available with it were ordered so. These numbers are centered around the colder climates, since this is a bad weather AWD and not a performance AWD (a capability which Ford has not explored since the older European RS products). And these AWD products are based on FWD, meaning that packaging is enormously less complicated.

So you've got to have an AWD capability for this hypothetical RWD-based product. Consider what it would cost to modify S550 for this. There's no data here... but there are examples in the industry:

• Chryslers very dated Mercedes platform goes back to an even older Mercedes E-class platform which already had it. And, BTW, this is offered purely for traction, and has no performance orientation at all.
• The Jaguar XF/XJ might be an example... if we set aside their cost model. They are using an expensive aluminum-intensive platform, whose roots go back to the DEW originally co-developed with Ford (LS, Thunderbird, and a cancelled Mustang). AWD was taken into consideration for that originally... but wasn't originally engineered. Note that so far they only offer AWD on a V-6 model, which suggests that the cost of re-engineering the platform for the engine changes necessary to clear the differential, the floorpan changes needed for the front transfer driveshaft, and the transmission tunnel changes needed for the transfer case where so high that it was only done for 1 of the 3 engine families they offer. At least the system was designed for a degree of agility and sporting dynamics, as we'd expect from Jaguar.
• The Nissan FM platform was purposefully designed from the start for this, meaning the front engine placement and the axle all incorporated this from the start. IT's offered on everything built from the FM platform by Nissan and Infiniti except the Z. And the FM platform is the basis for the front two-thirds of the GT-R (showing just how successful the shared platform design can be).

Jaguar is an example of retro-fitting an AWD system into an existing platform (even if some consideration was given to it originally, and that may have just been a twinkle in the eye of the joint Ford-Jaguar engineering team back in the 90s). Nissan is a better example, where it was designed and engineered with it from the start, offering greater flexibility to easily offer it as an option, but also accepting the inherent weight and the complexity of manufacturing.

Going back to the Falcon question. Ford could build a Falcon off of S550, ship it to Australia (not built there, since the plants are already winding down and will be bulldozed in 2016), and pay Australia's huge import tax. So it would end up selling at higher cost than it has already, and it would address a market segment that has been dying for a long time in a regulatory environment that is (arguably) hostile to big cars and big engines and that is not dissimilar to Obama's 54.5 CAFE. It's no wonder that Ford abandoned this plan years ago.

Given One Ford, which is rightly the bottom line for the company, the S550-based line of cars would have to sell in the several hundred thousand units/year range around the world. The RWD-biased cars would have to make sense to consumers as products to replace the current FWD-based ones. An AWD option (with the inherent inefficiencies of having a rear suspension, axle, and structure too heavy and bulky for the mission) would have to be paid for and after-the-fact-engineered into S550.

So emotion doesn't figure into this. It makes no sense from an engineering, a financial, or a consumer sales point of view.

 

[thePill]

Taurus sales are down because of the Fusion... Both are large sedans...

It's not a complicated issue... Once the iPhone6 comes out, who's gonna buy the 5?

Jay, too much drama for such a simple issue. Axe it or change it... Large RWD sedans have a limited market...

 

[Dirk McGurck]

The Flex grill looks horrendous.

 

[Rampant]

I think large sedans are dead as high volume cars. Upscale the Taurus a bit and max out the tech and sell it as a luxury upgrade from the Fusion.

The Fusion is doing so well, and smaller = better this day and age, the Taurus needs a differentiator. RWD won't do it, nor will power. Make it like the S class for Mercedes - the launch for all new tech that gets trickled down to the rest of the line.

 

[Josh Painter]

I think large sedans are dead as high volume cars. Upscale the Taurus a bit and max out the tech and sell it as a luxury upgrade from the Fusion.

The Fusion is doing so well, and smaller = better this day and age, the Taurus needs a differentiator. RWD won't do it, nor will power. Make it like the S class for Mercedes - the launch for all new tech that gets trickled down to the rest of the line.

Niche market cars can still be highly profitable. Witness GM's move to not only bring the Chevy SS to market, but to make it available with a manual gearbox. (!)

The Fusion is in the most competitive class in the automotive market - compact (aka "midsize") sedans. That's where the mass market is. Well, there and large pickup trucks.

What the Taurus needs more than anything is interior room. Its cabin is more cramped in some dimensions than that of the Fusion. It also has styling that is downright boring. It needs the new corporate design language (a dose of Aston Martin) incorporated.

The Mercedes S-class is RWD. As is the E-class. And the C-class.

 

[Grimace427]

The Mercedes S-class is RWD. As is the E-class. And the C-class.

Mercedes has released several FWD-based vehicles and will have at least two more in the coming model years. The CLA/GLA will become the best selling Mercedes in the not too distant future.

 

[S550Boss]

As a side note the, being nothing more than a rebadged Holden (loosing the butch styling for almost feminine styling), the Chevy SS was already paid for in every way except certification (and service costs). And it already offers the manual and the magnetics in Australia... even with the LS7.

So the basic car and additional options were easy to bring over here, development costs were absolutely minimal. But as we know the clock is ticking and the car as we know it will go out of production late next year with no possible reprieve. Same for the Caprice cop car (and do the cops know that?).

Somewhere inside GM, somebody is deciding whether or not to put a future replacement product on the Alpha program, maybe even with a Buick brother.

It'd be fun to see such a thing by Ford, but there isn't any basis for it. And with so many more important platforms in need of replacement (Fiesta is really old, Taurus is old, Focus is mid-life, along with the variants built on those platforms), seeing Ford spend any money on a performance 4-door is hard to see, especially given the lack of a platform that can be made into the role. An S550-based 4-door would have much less room inside than a Fusion. It's tough to see the market appeal of that.

 

[Josh Painter]

It'd be fun to see such a thing by Ford, but there isn't any basis for it.

Dodge sold over 100,000 Chargers in the U.S. and Canada last year. There is more than just a basis for a niche-market RWD "large" sedan.

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