Back to the original topic - that's easy, Ford Dealers suck the big one (well the 3 that I went to around my area), Ford marketing sux, and Ford's brand is on the decline. The Fiesta is a good car but they're marketing it all wrong - comparisons with other 'Euro' brands just doesn't work in Australia and harping on about German engineering at 16990 doesn't make jackshit difference when Mazda2s, Swifts and Yaris all come from Japan - for luxury cars >60k Germany is better than Japan. But at <20k Japan will beat Germany everytime cos the cost of ownership of a Jap car is cheaper and the quality difference is negligible (everyone will use cheap materials and cut corners at <20k).
Ford is the 'company that builds Falcons (aka taxis, the car dad use to drive, cop cars, govt cars etc)and as such its competitors in Australia ARE Holden, Mitsu and Toyota and every motoring journal compares the Fiesta up against Barina, Colt, Yaris - throw in Swift and Jazz for good measure.
I love it everytime Ford/Holden/Mitsu tries to push margin over volume - it dies in the **** everytime see the VE Commodore, 380 'make more private sales to keep the residuals up and don't discount' grand plans - total flops. The VE is selling now because Holden has to throw in free A/C and a free full-sized spare wheel to try to get closer to Aurion pricing. ****** RRP. I can see what Ford is doing with the Fiesta now - artificially trying to keep the supply down to keep prices up. Maybe its what they want but at this end of the market they should've gone for high volume and low margin, imported a hell of a lot more, pumped up the supply and probably have been able to cut the price by $500 and the waiting times to nothing - you know what Ford, nothing sells your cars like having them on the road and other people seeing them ON the road. You NEED more Fords of every type on Aussie roads. There's too few Focii and far too few Fiestas thats why you're stuck as the 'company that builds Falcons'.
Toyota, Mazdas and Honda (Mazda3, Civic/Accord) successes are self-perpetuating in a way - every near new car on the road is kinda like a moving ad. This brings me to my next point - I was negotiating at 3 different dealers and NOT one of them would do an Fiesta 3dr manual LX driveaway at 17000 - 1 month ago. This annoyed me greatly - they were all stuck at 17250, 17300 and being dicks about it with their used-car salesman tactics. I opened up the paper last week and guess what, Fiesta LX 3 dr manuals have a whole page to themselves, 16990 driveaway ADVERTISED. Am I glad I didn't buy the Fiesta - not cos I wanted to save $300 (or a bit more really) but because full page ads in papers with driveaway prices really hurt resale and a cars image sometimes - people think "wow, that's cheap but hold on there must be something wrong with Fiesta sales". This is the same reason why people don't buy 380s - cos Mitsubishi did this too many times in the past with the Magna - making some poor soul pay close to RRP and then the next weekend (not next year but literally the weekend after) dropping the price with a massive driveaway ad in the paper.
Don't get me wrong - the Fiesta is a GOOD CAR in its own merit. I test drove one and almost bought one because I really liked it - it handles nice and feels solid. However - Ford (dealerships, marketing) f888ked up every other part of the sales process so in the end I bought a Yaris 1.5 (don't hurt me) to replace the Telstar. It goes fast, every bit as solid and a slightly more modern design however the too skinny low-friction fuel saving tyres (185/60) with the higher centre of gravity means that it won't be a Fiesta around corners but as an A-B city car I'm not always looking for those limits - don't knock em until you've driven one. As for Toyota, well I know I said something bad about Toyota owners on this forum once but the Toyota ownership experience - cheaper parts, friendlier sales staff, a marketing dept that isn't going to crucify a cars resale and dealerships who've got their act together i.e they know they're going to make minimal margin on a <20k car but if they don't sell it to me, someone else will and that's another sales loss so lets just make the best of this we can and offer good service anyway cos they'll be back to buy another Toyota if we do so. I'm not saying their are no ******** Toyota dealers but at least 2/3 that I visited were willing and fair negotiators.
It just all ends up being a cheaper total cost of ownership when resales hold up, and resales hold up guess when? WHen heaps of private buyers buy a car so it comes as no surprise that Corolla, Mazda3 and Yaris resales as a percentage kill Commodore and Camry (fleet cars).
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