Simple, Americans are shifting away from trucks. Utilizing SVT's resources on the Fusion would have been a better choice.

Secondly, market research shows that vast majority of SUV's/Trucks are never taken off-road. I'd be curious to see what Ford set their sales target at.

 

If you are unaware of the sales target it seems irresponsible to predict the Raptor a failure.

 

Ford could target 5 and sell 6. Is that a sucess? The market conditions tell me that this car will not sell well. Wrong type of vehicle in this economic environment for a very specific niche.

 

A specific niche that will most likely line up for this thing. And the very fact that it's intended for a very specific niche means that the sales target will no doubt be quite low. If they were rolling this thing out as part of the regular F-Series family and expecting XLT sales figures, then yes. It would have FAIL written all over it (or stamped in the grille or something.)

But I don't see it being a failure. Only time will tell.

 

I always thought the Lightning was a pretty cool vehicle, even if it was mostly useless as a truck for the needs of an average full-size truck buyer.

 

The Lightning was cool as hell. But this just makes more sense as a truck.

 

Wow i think you are completely wrong and the raptor in my opinion was great thinking from SVT and was extremely original.

 

Well, obviously when this was being designed, Americans were still in love with trucks and SUVs. That point aside, this is a niche vehicle, which are never expected to have huge sales figures. They sit on the showroom floor and people come in to look at it. Said person looking at it thinks, this isn't practical for what I need and is more expensive than what I want to pay for a truck, but this normal F-150 they have on the lot is perfect for what I need. It's always hard to judge the success of a niche vehicle, because their ability to draw folks off the street to see one and end up buying some other Ford doesn't show up in sales numbers.

 

Also very true, no telling how many other vehicles they sell due to these halo vehicles drawing traffic.

 

In this economic environment, not very many. This truck is the wrong vehicle to be selling. Instead of wasting time & resources on this vehicle, Ford would have been better served focusing on strengthening their car lineup.

If we were talking about the GT500, I would agree that you would see a halo effect. Someone mentioned the Blackwood; This is Ford's Blackwood.

I digress, but this product is a prime example of why Ford is in financal trouble.

 

http://media.ford.com/article_displa...ticle_id=29529

Igor on BON posted this link. New Global Structure for FMC Performance Vehicles . . . moving to 'Other Fords', but will leave a link for 3-4 days.

 

The new King of Ford's worldwide performance efforts:

http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/04/f...t-and-team-rs/
SVT, FR, and RS are all coming together and Jost Capito is The Man.

 

just read this and i must say, i'm pretty stoked!!mmmm focus and fiesta RS or fusion and taurus ST anyone...

 

The Most Useless Full Size Truck was the Lincoln Blackwood.

But Could We All Please Get Back To a 2010 Mustang Related Topic or Get This Moved to the Other Fords Section?