Ford Cooks Up A Counter Attack..

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Ford cooks up a counter-attack



21 July 2006

James Stanford

Ford has locked in a Commodore counter-attack, with the Blue Oval preparing an updated Falcon model to counter the new Holden VE Commodore.

It won't be a big modification, but it is expected the BF II model will have styling changes to match the mechanical updates from last October. There could also be content additions in response to the Commodore.

Ford Australia president Tom Gorman would not comment on whether the Falcon would be given a styling tweak or upgrades. "I think it will be better to have a conversation next month," he says.

Ford will be one of the first customers of the VE Commodore, buying some cars to examine exactly what its main rival has come up with, but Gorman already has an opinion on the car.

"Frankly, they're really catching up to what we did at BA (2002), if you want to be honest, so we'll see what kind of effort they put into that," Gorman says.

Ford has already locked in part of its response, but is waiting to see what Holden does before it signs off on the final detail of its counter attack.

"We have to see what they do. The simple answer is I don't know where they're going to price it," Gorman says.

"My guess is the car's getting heavier, fuel economy's going to deteriorate -- there's going to be more cost in the vehicle. That's my guess just from what I know about."



Gorman admits the new Holden will make life tougher. "It's going to be a very challenging time. I wouldn't want you to think we're so arrogant that we're not paying attention to this," he says.

He is adamant the one thing Ford will not do is a Mitsubishi 380-style price cut to keep Falcon sales moving.

"If you come in and hack the price out of your offering all you're doing is killing the residual value. And when you have a lot of lease and fleet business, and some rental buy-backs you're killing yourself if you do that."


The Daily Telegraph