I know, and I have a feeling that Ford just might be the best selling cars here very soon.. I'm betting the all new Mustang will also be a huge hit!

 

I don't think I'll be in the market for a new car anytime soon so hopefully Ford can fix Focus and Fusion by then to look more like ... Ford instead of looking half European half Korean.
I would love to have the new Explorer, but it's just to pricey for me.

 

I hear ya, I wasnt going to buy another car but could not pass up the Pace Car, trying like hell to pay it off and replenish my savings and 401k again...

 

In your opinion . . . did the 1986 Taurus look like a Ford or was it a German(European) design?

 

A little bit of both ... Front end was so Audi 100, but the rest of the car didn't look much European.
I can understand why Ford took a gamble on '86 Taurus, because Ford's other mid-size car (LTD) wasn't selling well.
However, the situation is different now because the USA-designed Fusion is selling so well. Fusion just has the best year in its history and I don't know why is Ford taking a gamble with the global model (and by "global" I mean European because there is nothing the USA-designed in a '13 Fusion).

 

How do you know that Ford USA didn't have a hand in designing anything on the new Fusion? From my understanding, it was quite a collaborative effort among all the "global" design centers underneath the Ford umbrella, USA included.

 

It's really a common sense. Mid-size and anything smaller sell in huge numbers in Europe and there is no way Ford would ever risk Mondeo's high sales in Europe by designing it to have anything American in it. Another thing is, Ford Europe actually makes money on smaller cars unlike Ford USA which makes money only on larger vehicles.
So for Ford, Mondeo's much more important model than Fusion.
And just by looking at the 2013 Fusion you can tell it looks nothing like a traditional USA Ford.

Each Ford's division do what they do best. The global Ranger, for an example, was developed by Ford's USA team (in Australia) because Ford USA has the experience with building trucks. Why would Ford Europe need help from American engineers in building smaller cars like Focus and Fusion? Ford Europe has been building great smaller cars since the early 1970s, which is not the same thing I can say about Ford USA ...

 

Actually, I think the days of high Mondeo sales in Europe are a thing of the past and, apparently, so does Ford. The volume sales mantle in that market has very obviously been passed on to the Focus, a car which is very arguably closer to the size and intent of the first generation Mondeo than is the current model is.

Also, for the record, the CD4 Mondeo/Fusion was a dearborn based program, almost certainly because Fusion is a much more important product to the North American market than Mondeo is to Europe.

 

I just think if Fusion is more important to Ford than Mondeo, Ford would've design it to look more American. There's nothing American about it. Same thing happened with Focus.

 

I'm not sure that I would personally call the car predominantly American, European, or Pacific Rim influenced in terms of styling at this point. In fact, I have already seen the new Fusion be criticized for looking too European, too Asian, and too American and several times for each That said, those criticisms may support your theory that a truly global car for Ford is going to be an uphill battle since it seems to be Australians and Europeans who tend to think the car is too American and Americans who tend to think the car is too European or Asian. Again, as for my opinion, I'm just not sure what I think.

 

So instead of designing a car that's gonna be criticized all over the world for being too different than it should be, why didn't Ford use same platforms but different design for each continent?

Like they have already done so on 2005-2012 Fusion and Mazda 6? And that worked great for Fusion.

 

I get where you're going. At times I've thought that, potentially, Ford might have been wise to give everything B segment and smaller to European design offices and everything D segment and larger to North American design offices if they insisted on going to 'One Ford' since, realistically the former are far more important to Europe and the latter are far more important to North America.

As for Falcon, I think the only hope for this vehicle to remain rwd long term is to move onto the Mustang platform, possible as a 4-door 'coupe'. Such a car could be sold globally and, as a niche offering, relatively small volumes would be acceptable. The current Falcon is a hard sell even in Australia, I don't see Ford giving the car anything more than a temporary reprieve in it's current format unless something changes.