Mondeo to do ‘a Territory’

FORD says its upcoming Mondeo has all the right ingredients to emulate the success of the Territory SUV, which has been one of the few vehicles to bring new customers to the Blue Oval brand in recent times.

“To me, we have a blue print for success,” boasted Mr Winslow, who is Ford’s vice-president for marketing and sales, “... and it’s called the Territory.”

Mr Winslow is drawing product parallels between the European mid-sized sedan and hatchback – set to be offered in four and five-cylinder petrol and four-cylinder turbo-diesel guises come October – and the Australian-made four-door wagon that has dominated the medium-sized SUV segment since its mid-2004 debut.

“We went in, and we launched a great car that had all these features and was very, very different,” he said of the Territory.

“And we did it for under $40,000. We made an offer to the marketplace that basically said ‘I may have not been to a Ford store for a while, but I think I better go and have a look at this.’“So very clearly we have a template for success.”

With pricing that may just sneak in from under $30,000 (although Ford would not confirm this for now), the Mondeo will be strongly positioned to take on the likes of the Mazda ‘6’, Subaru Liberty and Honda Accord.

“We are going to come in (to the segment) with the Mondeo. I’ve driven the car. This isn’t going to be a car that’s going to try and go and chase rental cars, or that sort of stuff,” Mr Winslow emphasised.

One dealer told GoAuto that Ford is gearing up for about 500 Mondeo sales per month.

While Ford will not discuss sales expectations, it is confident that there is a ready pool of buyers waiting for the car.

“We believe the volume that we’ve got set down for the Mondeo is right without being too bullish, and we believe that the market size supports it,” Mr Winslow remarked.

Ford says that – with numbers sitting at just over seven per cent – the medium segment is healthier than it forecast when the Mondeo was given the green light again for Australia in late 2005.

“In fact, it’s a couple of points north of where it was when we actually approved the product plan,” Mr Winslow revealed, adding that “... we are not unhappy with the medium car segment.”

This is despite a slower-than-predicted uptake in medium-car sales in the aftermath of the oil-price spike in the middle of 2005.

“It seems to me that the medium segment had not shown the growth that we intuitively thought it would, but it now seems to be showing some,” he added.

This slow medium recovery comes after a 10-year period where it appeared to be almost squeezed out of viable existence for many car-makers – including Ford – by the SUV sales surge of the 1990s on one side, and the upsizing of what we still call the ‘small’ car segment from the other In fact, at the time of the last (HD series) Mondeo’s demise in early 2001, Ford Australia executives were effectively referring to the then-new Escape compact SUV as the Mondeo replacement.

However, Mr Winslow conceded that the segment has already seen once false dawn over the last two years.

“The medium car segment has been going (at around seven per cent of the total new-vehicle market in Australia) for a couple of years now.

“When the fuel issues started to hit (in the latter half of 2005), one would have thought that people would naturally tumble from large cars down to medium sized cars.

“But... what seemed to happen is that people went a number of different ways, to small cars – but people still spent as much money… one with leather… and safety (like) airbags.

“If you have a look at Mazda with the ‘3’, they sell about 40 per cent of their volume in the mid-to-upper series.

Among other reasons, Mr Winslow cited the fact that today’s small cars are virtually the same size inside as a medium-sized sedan of the 1980s and early 1990s.

“Small cars are not small cars any more,” he remarked.

So what will stop the Mondeo going down the same path as the Holden Vectra – a similarly sized European import that, even after several price drops, still did not meet its initial sales targets? “The strategy is ‘Go out and talk to the people who actually sell the cars’,” Mr Winslow explained.

Ford says it is communicating with its larger dealer body throughout Australia to seek help and advice in all matters of Mondeo marketing.

“We have some dealers that are not reticent in telling us what they think that will be our plan,” he said.

“We will sit with a group of our dealers and we will talk to them about what we should and shouldn’t do.

Ford says its renewed open-dialogue protocol with the dealer body is already evident in recent specification and price adjustments made to other models – specifically the Falcon and Territory.

“Some of the changes we have made more recently – especially on Falcon – wasn’t dreamt up (by marketing)… this was about sitting down and talking to our major dealers, who are engaged in the day-to-day business, and know what is going on with the customers and their wants and needs, and we’ve taken their advice and acted on it.

“And we are going to do exactly the same for Mondeo,” underlined the Ford veteran.

In fact, far from only thinking about the marketing of the Mondeo now, Ford began to consult its dealers about the vehicle and the medium-sized segment as far back as 2005, when the current fuel-price surge was just getting into full swing.

“We engaged them over 18 months ago on this, (telling the dealer body) ‘Hey, this is the plan.’“It’s not about ‘Well, I guess (the cars) are on the boat now so we should start to think about how we position it and how we take demand either.’“A year and a half ago we said: ‘Here’s where we’re heading here’s what we should do here’s the variants we think we should offer and what we think this is the price bands...’ and they said ‘do this, do that, more for this less for that’.”

Mr Winslow stated that there are no residual bad feelings in the market place for the Mondeo brought on by the earlier attempt at selling the vehicle here:“When we researched it and talked to our dealers, it did not seem to be a negative.

“And you may have some people who remember it 10 years ago, but you also have the halo effect of what’s happening in Europe, and thanks to the internet and the fact that the economy is a lot more global, people now have access to what’s going on over there.

“Yes… very clearly this is a new car… and we don’t believe we are dragging any negatives into the Mondeo.

Mr Winslow believes that his team has carried out the necessary work to help ensure that the new Mondeo will not be left off buyers’ shopping lists like the old one was – even though, over its five-and-a-half year run, Ford did reduce the car’s price and up its feature-ante.

“My personal view is that... we didn’t go through the necessary rigour to bring the car to market in the correct specification and in the correct way,” he admitted.

“It’s not about the price all of the time it’s about value for money, what you’re getting, who your target market is, what their wants and needs are am I meeting them am I meeting them at the right market equation.

“If you go through that necessary rigour then I think you get it right.”

With such a focus on getting the Mondeo right this time, does Mr Winslow worry about it cannibalising Falcon sales in the months leading to the next-generation ‘Orion’ model coming on stream?“There will invariably be some substitution,” he said, “... but when you actually drive this car… I genuinely believe that this car will attract people who have never been to a Ford store for a while.

“(Mondeo) is a very European drive it’s a very European car I think it’s actually going to attract a different buyer – that’s my personal hypotheses.

“Yes there will be some substitution 12 months from now you can tell me whether I was right or wrong!”

Read more:

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World debut: Ford unveils Mondeo in Melbourne

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