VFacts March..Commy 85% sales increase!!! Falcon !!!!

[johnydep]

Originally Posted by Syndrome

Not correct. Once Ford announced "Ford 2000" the Falcon was an orphan and was on borrowed time. Dearborn clearly directed it's Australian subsidiary on what to do and that was to spend as little money as possible. This made the car less competitive with each model updated as the guts were ripped out of the car with the intention of directing Falcon buyers to other Ford products. This process started in the mid 1990s when Ford sold the Taurus in Australia. If it wasn't for the late Geoff Polities the Falcon would have already been dead and buried by now. There has been much evidence for many years that Dearborn no longer wanted to build cars in Australia and have been working towards the eventual shut down of local production. Which is a slap in the face for Australia as this was the first country outside North America to have a Ford assembly plant and Ford was the number one car maker in this country prior to the release of the Holden 48-215 plus a number of times between the 1970s and 1990s.

Polities did not save the Falcon, he saved Ford. The Territory was his baby, he got it off the ground and proved that the market wanted a vehicle like the Territory.

Ford Australia management then slowly killed it by resting on short term success. They were too slow to bring in a diesel option, too slow to fix problems, too slow to upgrade, too slow to build an export market.

Blame Ford Australia management - lazy and pig headed. And previous Australian Federal and State governments - lazy and pig headed.