As the new year rolled in a couple of weeks ago, Ford Motor Company announced that its Ford F-150 remained America’s number-one-selling vehicle. Overall, new vehicle sales rose 4% in 2024, driven by a 7% increase in truck sales. While SUV sales rose 1%, Lincoln brand SUV demand increased 28% year over year.
And for 2024, Ford is no longer king of the recalls. That honor went to Stellantis, which had 71 last year to Ford’s 67. It all sounds great for the Blue Oval on the surface.
Ford quality remains an ongoing issue
Still, that number of recalls means 4.8 million Ford and Lincoln models were affected, which is emblematic of some of the problems festering at the house that Henry built.
“This has been an ongoing thing with Ford for a very long time, and it’s not entirely clear what the root cause is,” said Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research at Telemetry Insights. “They seem to not be able to wrap their heads around actually validating and verifying everything before they before job one. And you know that has a cascading effect. The longer an error stays in the system before it’s fixed, the more expensive it is when you ultimately fix it.”
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Fixing a problem after 90 days of production is much less expensive than fixing it three years into production with a recall. However, this has remained an ongoing problem for Ford for the past quarter century.
“I think they need to do a much better job of finding issues earlier in the process, earlier in the development and validation process.”
Ford doesn’t follow its plan
In recent years, when a new trend emerges in the marketplace, Ford has been quick to pounce on it, perhaps too quick.
“I think it was 2018 that they had an event in Dearborn where they said, ‘Yeah, going forward, we’re going to have hybrid powertrains available in all of our trucks and SUVs,” Abuelsamid recalls.
This would seem natural, given that the Ford Escape Hybrid has been in production since 2004. Yet by 2025, Ford will offer hybrid drivelines only on the F-150, Maverick, and Escape. In a fit of corporate ADHD, rather than expand hybrid powertrains to the Bronco, Bronco Sport, and Ranger, the company quickly pivoted to battery-electric vehicles, producing the Mustang Mach-E, F-150 Lightning, and E-Transit van rather than expanding its hybrid line-up.
“It’s like they can’t seem to develop a plan and stick to it, and that may actually be the biggest flaw is the inability to actually stick to a plan,” Abuelsamid said.
Ford’s product cadence
As demand for a certain kind of automobile slackens, Ford immediately adjusts its product cadence. This can be seen in the way they slowed their EV production in response to faltering consumer demand.
“Manufacturers all anticipated the public to leap to EVs because EV technology had made such a quantum leap. But once you got past the early adopters, mainstream buyers just aren’t shifting over to EVs at the rate everybody anticipated,” said Sam Fiorani, Vice President of Global Vehicle Forecasting for AutoForecast Solutions.
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“This is the second largest purchase you’re going to make in your life. And you have to live with that decision for the next 5-to-10 years. And people aren’t willing to take the risk yet because the infrastructure is really becoming an issue as there are more and more EVs on the road.”
But Ford failed to have any back-up products should EV demand slow.
“They dropped the ball on continuing with some of the other programs,” said Abuelsamid. “And so, what we’ve ended up with over the last few years is just a sequence of mild mid-cycle refreshes. I mean, even the F-150 that they launched in 2023, and that was really more of a mid-cycle refresh, that wasn’t an all-new vehicle.”
The lack of a Plan B has other automakers who followed Ford’s example scrambling to revise plans.
“In order to make a U-turn, it will take years to reintroduce a next generation, or an update or anything to fill in that gap,” Fiorani said. “This is not just an issue for Ford. It’s really an issue for all automakers who aren’t already in the hybrid space.”
But not all automakers are affected. Those who were chastised for not quickly turning to EV production are in the best position.
“In hindsight, Stellantis, Toyota, Mazda, and a handful of other companies will be seen as making the right short-term move.”
Ford is too quick at dropping vehicle lines
This problem is exacerbated by the company’s speed at hastily dropping a product line, even if it’s selling relatively well.
Annual Ford Ranger sales in 2011, the year it was dropped from the lineup, tallied 70,832 units. The company revived the nameplate in the U.S. market for 2019 in reaction to booming midsize pickup sales but wasn’t able to regain the momentum it once had.
Last year, Ford sold a mere 46,205 Rangers, 35% fewer than when the Ranger was dropped from the lineup. Similarly, Ford sold 166,045 Fusion sedans before the model was discontinued in 2019. Last year, Honda sold 162,723 Accord sedans in the United States, and it has no plans to discontinue the model.
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“Sales of sedans across the industry have declined, but they haven’t disappeared entirely,” Abuelsamid said. “A whole bunch of OEMs are still producing vehicles in that form factor and selling a lot of them. And I think that it’s absolutely plausible that Ford could have done an update, at least, to the Fusion.”
Again, Ford’s corporate ADHD laid waste to such a possibility.
Ford’s entry-level exposure
Ford has also abandoned the low-end of the market, which could prove to be a fatal error for the company that built itself selling the affordable Model T. The company dropped the EcoSport in 2022, Fiesta in 2019, and Focus in 2018, leaving only the Maverick to attract that customer segment.
“Ford seemed to actually have an answer there with the Maverick, you know, they launched it at a $20,000 price point,” Abuelsamid said. “And rather than anticipating that, hey, at $20,000, this thing is probably going to be really appealing to a lot of people, they decided, OK, our dealers are able to charge backups on these Mavericks. Let’s just raise the price and take that money for ourselves. And so now you have Mavericks, instead of starting at $20,000, three years later, they’re starting at $27,000, and they’re sitting on lots.”
But Detroit automakers continually abandon the entry-level market, only to return once their sales fall to foreign competition.
“That’s what caused Volkswagen to eat their lunch in 1959; it’s what caused the Japanese to eat their lunch in the late ’60s. It’s what caused the Koreans to eat their lunch in the ’80s. The Chinese are probably next.”
Final thoughts
Given the speed, technology, and creativity of Korean and Chinese automakers, Ford’s failure to address their challenges, particularly the last one, could prove fatal. And tariffs will not stop the threat.
“It’s going to be a big story. The Chinese will do it one way or the other,” Fiorani said. “If you start importing these from Brazil or Mexico or Eastern Europe, you’re bringing in cars that aren’t technically Chinese. They’re now Brazilian or Mexican or Slovakian or whatever it is.”
Given that the Buick Envision and Lincoln Nautilus are made in China and sold here, there’s no escaping one essential fact.
“They’ll find a way around the Chinese ban,” Fiorani said.
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