Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I know this isn't 2010 Mustang specific, but it has ramifications for that car and GRWD.

This is not good news for the GRWD platform. Still, at least Mulally says the decision (for the Falcon, at least) will be customer driven. So, say it loud and say it proud:

WE WANT RWD FORDS PLEASE, MR MULALLY!!

http://www.autoblog.com/2008/08/26/s...t-wheel-drive/

"You guys are obsessed with rear wheel drive," Alan Mulally mused to the Australian press after a browbeating about which pair of wheels might propel the Falcon into the future. Try as they might, the Ford Chief would not be pinned down about the chassis architecture of future Falcons, saying only that the choice would be customer driven, and plugging front and all-wheel drive vehicles as "pretty spectacular."

Mulally is right that Ford's global push to put exceptional small cars in showrooms is what the automaker's focus is and should be. The Falcon has long fallen off its sales peak from the halcyon days of two decades ago, and while Mulally agrees that it's "an absolutely dynamite vehicle," small cars in the future will prop up the more niche-y vehicles like the FG Falcon. Mulally went on to say that Australia will serve as an engineering and product development outpost for Ford, and the big-vehicle prowess in Oz will be useful regardless of layout. As Ford pulls its global platforms together, the Ranger and Focus will come at us from Australia, too.

While we all wish we could fill our driveways with an FPV GT sporting Paul Stanley eye makeup and Boss V8 motivation, we're not holding our breath. Ford doesn't appear to be following GMs lead bringing its Australian cars stateside, and the V8s days may be numbered. Mulally acknowledged that fuel efficiency and carbon dioxide emissions are going to be tremendously important going forward, which will likely spur a shift to smaller four- and six-cylinder powerplants with forced induction serving as the performance option. An FG FPV with an Ecoboost four underhood? Heck, we'd still take it - it's bound to be better than the mush-tastic fleet-only Crown Victoria"

 

Next time I speak to my source, I will have to ask him about the GRWD platform.
It would be nice to see Ford re-design the Crown Vic or create a nice/modern RWD V8 car(Torino, T-Bird).

 

Amen, brother, amen.

 

Could this mean Mustang will continue to use the D2C chassis in the next generation? It's a nice solid chassis; if they put the control blade rear suspension under the D2C, I think it could used for quite a while.

 

The Falcon's sales have been trending down for years, and the Taurus is the same size. I'm guessing anything is possible going forward, depends on what their market research says.


I don't actually see this as the end of GRWD or even RWD in Oz. I'm getting the distinct impression that GRWD plans don't involve volume so much as targeted niche markets. We were thinking a production GRWD Interceptor would be full-size, replacing the CV here and FG Falcon over there. However, I could easily see a Ford-brand MKR (mid-size RWD sedan) marketed alongside the FWD/AWD Mondeo/Fusion Taurus/? in both markets as a sporty alternative to the mass-market drone cars.

 

Ah yes, but perhaps if Ford has invested money in an all new Falcon platform earlier, sales wouldn't be on the slide now.

Still, hindsight is a wonderful thing.

 

Bring that Falcon over here and see what happens....

 

I think it was Old Wizard from BON who stated some time ago that virtually nothing was being ruled out for GRWD indicating that the design could easily go 'clean sheet' if that were deemed to be the best avenue or that D2C could easily be used as a basis for GRWD were that deemed to be the wiser choice. My guess, given how pleased Ford seems to be with D2C, is that we will see a lot of D2C influence in the GRWD platform but with improvements and additions, like 'Control Blade' multi-link IRS, thrown in to make it a world beater.

The killers here are competition and positioning. Tariffs used to help the Australian auto industry enormously, but the competition has gotten smarter with brands like Toyota releasing less expensive, Oz built versions of the Camry and even Oz-vested brands like Ford offering cars like the Mondeo which avoid tariffs by one avenue or another and likewise cost much less than the Falcon does. When you further consider how small the Australian market actually is you realize how vulnerable cars like the Falcon and Commodore really are.

I think you are pretty close to money here Moosetang. In my net rounds I've seen and heard a lot of things regarding GRWD, and by this point I don't believe GRWD's future is now or has ever been tied to the fate of the Australian Falcon. As you indicate sales have been trending down for some time now, and given this I don't believe that Ford ever considered Falcon to be a vital part of the GRWD landscape.....the numbers just aren't there.

The truth is that Ford could very easily replace the existing Mondeo and Falcon in the Aussie market with a homespun take on the Mondeo, possibly badged as a Falcon, with a full-size GRWD-based sedan (the Taurus replacement) technically replacing the recently defunct Fairlane/LTD lineup. Overall size of these vehicles may shift a bit compared to their predecessors, but such a solution would allow the best of both worlds with minimal market overlap. Purists may not approve, but that doesn't make such a scenario any less plausible.

 

Carbon dioxide emissions? what does that have to do with anything other then junk science? Maybe we will eventually kill off all plant life and turn this into an ice ball afterall :P