2007 sales-without the Taurus???

[DCK]

Well, the 500 is set for an update, in less than a year. Some forget.

The Fusion should have came out first, and then the bigger car. The 500 was compared to the Taurus as its 'replacement', since it was made in the same plant. Then it was paned since it didn't look like a Mopar 300.

 

Once the plain eggrate grille is gone, and maybe the car is promoted as a true family sized car and not a 'mid size'? Also, the 3.5L is a boost. If Toyota can promote full sized cars, why can't Ford?

Anyway, the losing unprofitable sales is not 'blood'. Some want to see the fake fleet proped sales #'s to 'feel good', but isn't long term profitability more important? And the darn rental companies should pay a profitable price, or go away.

It isn't worth them to pay a profitable price if the resale value going to drop by half in a year, they are better off purchasing camry's.

[Roadrunner]

Where will the fleets get the 100,000 plus cars they need if they can't buy a Taurus? I doubt GM wants to sell that many more to fleets and the Japanese won't either. Everyone wants to decrease their dependency on fleet sales, but there hasn't been any decrease in fleet demand. Something has to give. I'm very interested to see what fills the vacuum when the Taurus is gone.

 

Hyundai, or Nissan. That's my guess, unless a hurting DCX comes along and picks it up.

[Noah Harbinger]

It isn't worth them to pay a profitable price if the resale value going to drop by half in a year, they are better off purchasing camry's.

 

It's a chicken-n-egg thing there: The Taurus's resale is poor because the rental companies pay so little for it, so they re-sell them for cheap, so the resale value goes down, so the rental companies pay so little for it.

 

The 500 and Fusion are predicted to have resale values about as good as the Camry... and that should stay true as long as they don't give in to pressure to sell unprofitably to fleets.

[old_fairmont_wagon]

I can tell you for a certainty that Ford is either directly or indirectly selling Fusion SE v6s to US Governemt Fleets. There's one sitting in a garage about a block away from me, along with a bunch of Fleet Escapes, Explorers, a taurus (vulcan), and a Jeep Liberty. Now, its only one, and not a bunch, but, its definitely a fleet vehicle.

[silvrsvt]

I can tell you for a certainty that Ford is either directly or indirectly selling Fusion SE v6s to US Governemt Fleets. There's one sitting in a garage about a block away from me, along with a bunch of Fleet Escapes, Explorers, a taurus (vulcan), and a Jeep Liberty. Now, its only one, and not a bunch, but, its definitely a fleet vehicle.

 

 

The point is that the Fusion will not have all of its sales dumped into fleet sales, more like 15% or so of total sales....

[igor]

I can tell you for a certainty that Ford is either directly or indirectly selling Fusion SE v6s to US Governemt Fleets. There's one sitting in a garage about a block away from me, along with a bunch of Fleet Escapes, Explorers, a taurus (vulcan), and a Jeep Liberty. Now, its only one, and not a bunch, but, its definitely a fleet vehicle.

 

nobody says there are NO fusions in fleets ... that would be stupid - fleets are customers .. the indurstry standard for fleet sales is 15% of overall sales. This usually ensures that while you satisfy the fleet thirst, you are selling few enough, that you are not giving them away to fleets for cheap.

 

that was the problem with detroit - they would have plenty uncompetitive vehicles, and need to run the plants, so they would sell 30,.40, 50 or more precent f their overall sales to fleets. At that point, they are trying to sell so many of them to customers who really only care about the bottom line - price ..so these models would be sold dirt cheap, maybe leased for even less, and would end up on the used car market in about a year for very very low price, forcing actual human sellers of these cars to sell for similarly low price- thus reducing the cars' resale value.

 

Fusion is expected to come back this year with some 10% fleet sales. Five Hundred had 10% last year, and will likely climb some to maybe 15% this year. these are non-zero values, but are low enough, so that fleets are not buying these cars for incredibly low prices, and thus are not selling them for such low prices either.

 

Igor

[waymondospiff]

nobody says there are NO fusions in fleets ... that would be stupid - fleets are customers .. the indurstry standard for fleet sales is 15% of overall sales. This usually ensures that while you satisfy the fleet thirst, you are selling few enough, that you are not giving them away to fleets for cheap.

 

Very true. There have to be at least *some* fleet sales. The US Govt. for one and the contracts I mentioned above for the rental companies fleet usually have requirements too. For example, say "Vanguard" (National & Alamo) resign their contract with Chrysler this year. The contract will be written for price discounts and fleet makeup among many issues. The rental companies want cars they can rent, meaning CCAR, ICAR, & FCAR classes, compact, intermediate, and full-size, respectively. These contracts state at least X% must be CCAR, ICAR, or FCAR classes. So, for the companies signed with Ford, it means Ford has to at least supply SOME ICAR vehicles to these companies. And that would be the Fusion/Milan twins.

 

So, yes, SOME Fusions will have to be sold fleet. No question. Hopefully it won't be too many to uphold the Fusion's resale value. But hopefully Ford will be able to make money and sell some cars!

 

Scott