April V-Facts

[ECOJET]

wow how is a hilux ute outselling family transport??? has to be all the tradies upgrading surely...
mazda3 is interesting, a big sign of the current trends towards nice sport smaller cars... focus couldnt come any sooner

[marcosambrose]

Ford need to hurry thier a*se up and get the facelifted focus here (already on sale in Europe)

Ford will have to let the Territory slide while they wait until 2010 (new V6 and TT diesel & facelift)

so once again, ford australia too slow.

[MarkIV]

Can anyone tell me how many Ford dealers ther are in Australia? I would of thought it was in the hundreds which means some dealers aren't even selling one a month of some models.

I remember Holden saying that they had hoped to sell 20,000 GTOs in the US but there was 20,000 GM dealers and it wasn't practical to get every dealer involved for just one sale per dealer per year on average. This in part contributed to the relative lack of success of the venture.

[weenie]

Originally Posted by MarkIV

Can anyone tell me how many Ford dealers ther are in Australia? I would of thought it was in the hundreds which means some dealers aren't even selling one a month of some models.

I remember Holden saying that they had hoped to sell 20,000 GTOs in the US but there was 20,000 GM dealers and it wasn't practical to get every dealer involved for just one sale per dealer per year on average. This in part contributed to the relative lack of success of the venture.

I think you will find with the monaro that the original business case was around 4500 per year for so many years. But with the yanks liking it so much they ended exporting 40,000+ units as well as local sales. Hardly call that a lack of success.

Being a hsv owner aside, i still cant comprehend how the craptiva is catching up to the territory : Are people that ****ed with the build quality?? Actually they are not really in the same class. Side by side, one is a decent size with power to match & the other is a little toy with a engine out of a pfaff sewing machine. I like when captiva owners talk of towing, especially the diesel. How you can put these 2 words in a sentence is beyond me.

[russellw]

... and the usual graphical representation. This month we have added an interesting little look at where our vehicles actually are sourced from.

Cheers
Russ

[ltd]

Originally Posted by weenie

I think you will find with the monaro that the original business case was around 4500 per year for so many years. But with the yanks liking it so much they ended exporting 40,000+ units as well as local sales. Hardly call that a lack of success.

Being a hsv owner aside, i still cant comprehend how the craptiva is catching up to the territory : Are people that ****ed with the build quality?? Actually they are not really in the same class. Side by side, one is a decent size with power to match & the other is a little toy with a engine out of a pfaff sewing machine. I like when captiva owners talk of towing, especially the diesel. How you can put these 2 words in a sentence is beyond me.

Didn't the Monaro have poor sales until they revamped it? I remember reading about it in a motoring section in San Francisco about 3 years ago and they were talking about it's poor sales and how they predicted the new model would go (bonnet scoops etc). One of the journalists was calling the outgoing model very plain looking and not in keeping with the GTO heritage. That was 2005, and I think you are right because it became a very popular car after that.
All things being equal well done to Holden in finding such an export market, Ford should look to do the same and with the boss of Ford Alan Mulally getting a G6E-T as his daily, hopefully he will have a moment of inspiration and start importing our cars to the USA.

I agree with you on the craptiva, it looks so much like the Kia version its beyond me how so many love something so rubbish.

Well done on owning a HSV too, these days it's fast becoming politically incorrect to own anything with a capacity greater than 3 litres. What model have you got?

[russellw]

Originally Posted by MarkIV

Can anyone tell me how many Ford dealers ther are in Australia? I would of thought it was in the hundreds which means some dealers aren't even selling one a month of some models.

Last count I had there were 292 but it's a moving target and that figure could be out by 10 % or so.

Cheers
Russ

[Bossxr8]

Originally Posted by weenie

I think you will find with the monaro that the original business case was around 4500 per year for so many years. But with the yanks liking it so much they ended exporting 40,000+ units as well as local sales. Hardly call that a lack of success.

It was considered a failure because it didn't sell anywhere near their prodictions, they had to heavily discount them to get rid of the remaining stock and as AFAIK they still have some GTO's sitting around Pontiac yards unsold. They just can't move them.