Ford is to replace the Taurus, the last American sedan that credibly competed with Japan with a new midsize car called the Futura, according to the New York Times and other reports.
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The name has long been used on mid-range versions of Ford Australia’s Falcon and has also appeared in the US on Falcon-derived production model coupes and motor show concept models.
A Car Connection website report on Wednesday described the Futura, which made its debut at the New York motor show this week and goes on sale in 2005 as an ’06 model, as looking like an updated version of Ford’s recent 427 sedan concept.
In a statement released late on Wednesday Ford said an all-aluminum 2.3-litre four-cylinder engine based on its new global I-4 engine architecture will be standard. It will have a counter-rotating balance shaft for smoothness, and four valves per cylinder and variable intake valve timing (VVT) for good low-end torque, strong high-end power, improved fuel economy and low emissions.
This engine was introduced with affiliate Mazda’s new 6 and weighs approximately 40 pounds less than Ford’s current Zetec 2.0-litre I-4 engine used in the Focus compact.
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By GlobalDataFord said four-cylinder power will be “a key to Futura’s success” because today’s mid-size car segment leaders sell from 50 to 80% of their volume with four-cylinder engines, approximately 25% of small-car buyers migrate to mid-size cars, and more than three-quarters of them purchase a four-cylinder model.
The new four-cylinder engine will be “significantly enhanced” by modern, fuel efficient transmissions, Ford claimed, adding that a three-litre Duratec V6 engine would be optional.
The hybrid electric powertrain developed for the Escape Hybrid will become available later.
The Futura Hybrid, like the latest Escape Hybrid also unveiled at the New York show this week, mates the 2.3-liter I4 petrol engine with a 65-kilowatt electric motor. As a full hybrid, it will have the capability to run on full-battery power, the petrol alone or petrol and battery together.
Full hybrids dramatically improve fuel economy and reduce emissions in city driving – particularly in “stop and go” traffic by shutting down the petrol engine and running on battery power alone.
Performance will approach the level of the Duratec V-6, but with fuel economy better than a similarly sized four-cylinder car.
According to the New York Times, Ford executives said on Tuesday that the long-serving Taurus, which dates from the mid-1990s, would be phased out in the middle of the decade and that three new vehicles under development would replace it.
Two go on sale beginning next year: the Five Hundred, a large Audi-like sedan, and the Freestyle, a combination sport utility vehicle and station wagon that shares a similar European styling and will replace the Taurus wagon, the NYT added.
The newspaper said the Futura will be aimed at the top-selling Honda Accord and the Toyota Camry when introduced in 2005 and will offer buyers a hybrid version that supplements its petrol engine with electric power.
Ford is also unveiling its latest Escape Hybrid SUV in New York this week. It will go on sale to fleets at the end of 2003 and reach retail buyers in the second half of 2004.
“Following the launch of Futura, Taurus will retire,” Ford division president Steve Lyons told the New York Times.
The NYT said that Ford has already planned to cut production of Taurus and its sister vehicle, the Mercury Sable. Next year production will be cut from two plants to just one, in Atlanta, Georgia. Sales of the two cars peaked at 410,000 annually in 1992 and fell to 247,000 last year, the NYT added.
“Duplicating the old Taurus’s success, or the current Accord’s, would be like lightning striking twice,” Merrill Lynch analyst John Casesa told the NYT. “The Accord and the Camry are so established that the domestics are outsiders trying to fight their way back in.”
Analysts told the NYT that Ford needs to re-establish a beachhead in the meat-and-potatoes passenger car market, especially with Japanese companies pushing into the last stronghold of Detroit, the pickup truck.
At stake is “not just their credibility,” Casesa told the newspaper, “it’s their credit ratings. It’s such a big part of the market it matters if they make money there.
Making cars profitable has been a perennial problem not just for Ford but the rest of the Big Three, the NYT noted, adding that General Motors, Ford and Chrysler all earn their automotive profits almost entirely from sales of SUV’s and pickup trucks.
Analysts are already viewing GM’s redesigned and much-publicised Chevrolet Malibu sedan, which will hit showrooms later this year, with sceptism, the paper said.
The New York Times said that, after 18 years and nearly eight million Tauruses and Mercury Sables sold, Ford’s flagship sedan has evolved from daring to dull in the eyes of most reviewers and customers. In addition, Ford stopped making any significant profit on the Taurus years ago and now sells more than half of the cars cheaply to rental or corporate fleets, or to its own employees, the paper added.
But “until they restyled it and made it ugly, it was actually a popular car,” longtime motor industry analyst Maryann Keller told the NYT.
The paper said Keller was referring to a much criticised mid-1990s redesign of the car that rendered it an odd homage to the oval, with every light and curve slavishly adhering to form, and made it more expensive.
Taurus, when it was introduced, “was an innovative car,” Ms. Keller told the New York Times. “It was Ford’s time.”
Historian Douglas Brinkley told the paper that Ford effectively began again with the Taurus and took pains to create something with both fresh styling, and approached details as a priority, like colour-coding dipsticks to make it easy for ordinary drivers to work out where the oil went. Its styling was aerodynamic and markedly different from the boxy cars of the moment.
“Without that car, it’s unlikely Ford would have been able to survive into the new millennium,” Brinkley reportedly said. “It was an extraordinarily innovative car at the time. They had a blank page to work from and they started completely from scratch. They weren’t just building it from leftover Ford parts.”
According to the New York Times, Brinkley added, “The lesson of the Taurus is that you can’t take a piecemeal approach, take parts from other cars, and have a new” vehicle.
The NYT said the three new Fords are still a year or two away from hitting the streets, which means the Taurus will have several years as a lame duck — far too long to wait, according to analysts.
“Today is way too late,” Keller told the New York Times. “Last June was way too late.”
