Ford considers standard curtains for Falcon

AFTER Holden announced it would make side curtain airbags standard across the Commodore range, Ford Australia marketing and sales vice-president Mark Winslow said there was scope for specification changes to be made to the FG Falcon range before it hits the streets in May.

“We’ve always got room to manoeuvre – this is a competitive business,” he said. “We’ve always had a great safety story. Falcon has led the safety race going right back into the 1980s – and we’ll continue to do that.”

FG lookin' good: Bill

ASKED whether the Blue Oval brand faced an uphill battle to prove how “new” the FG Falcon was when some of the models looked similar to the BFII, Ford Australia president Bill Osborne said the company had deliberately not taken the car’s styling in a radical direction.

“When you have an iconic brand like the Falcon, making a huge departure from your styling cues is a very risky proposition,” he said. “We wanted to keep the general flavour of Falcon’s past because people recognise and accept the brand, but it is essentially an all-new vehicle from chassis all the way up.

“I think consumers will be pleased that it maintains the heritage of the Falcon brand from our standpoint, we think it is a modern interpretation of what a Falcon should look like,” he said.

Mr Osborne added that he was pleased with the reaction from media and dealers after the FG’s official reveal last month.

“Dealers have been very, very excited and we have been very pleased with the reaction in the press,” he said.

Left: Ford Australia president Bill Osborne.

FG launch budget

NOT about to be drawn on the exact sum Ford Australia has committed for the launch of its crucial new FG Falcon, marketing and sales vice-president Mark Winslow nonetheless admitted that it would be one of the biggest launches it has ever held.

“It’s substantial. I’m not going to give you a dollar figure, but we will clearly support it as much as any other launch that we’ve ever done – it’s that important for us. It represents a third or better of a market that is 120,000 to 130,000 units a year, so it will have that support.”

Mondeo wagon prospects

FORD’S refusal to discuss the prospects of a FG station wagon arriving, the continued production of the BF-series wagon, and the unveiling in Melbourne of a Mondeo wagon all illustrate how the Blue Oval brand is managing its medium-large-car load-hauling requirements ... and countering the imminent arrival of Holden’s Sportwagon.

As GoAuto revealed last month, Ford has designed an FG wagon but is still to confirm production. The actual extent of carryover of platform architecture from BF to FG is also a subject of interest, but difficult to ascertain. The continuing BFIII wagon, for example, uses the BF platform with Orion “upgrades”.

Asked whether the Mondeo wagon would eventually replace the Falcon wagon, Ford Australia’s sales and marketing chief Mark Winslow said: “I don’t know about that. The point of view is that BF Mk III is very much tool of trade, and this (Mondeo) is your true sports touring package.”