[rpvitiello]

Originally Posted by focaljet-1

As I have said from Day One, import the C1 Focus but badge it as a Mercury and price it against the GTI. Maybe even slap the "Capri" name on it. And let Ford sell the C170 Focus as an entry level car, as is.

But, this is not going to happen. So people need to get on with their lives.

well mercury in its current form needs to GO AWAY. They should be able to accomplish "mercury" by just having a top trim of all their cars with a ford badge. Also their are things they do on purpose to make fords WORSE cars, and mercury better to improve the "perceived value" of mercury. Many of these little touches have no cost difference, but they just make fords look worse. Most people do not think of mercury when they cross shop toyota, the think the ford brand. If ford owned the car market this would be fine, but the existence of mercury is actually hurting the competitiveness of ford, and the whole company at this point. Ford needs to be moved a little upscale to where mercury is now, and placed in direct completion with Toyota in quality price etc... (what people EXPECT of the ford brand) and if they want to sell super cheap cars they need another brand UNDER ford (to go against scion)

They could spend ALLOT of money on marketing to make people think of mercury over ford when cross shopping ford products, but do you really want your company’s name on the WORST brand you sell?

Also it IS no late to kill off this car since they are already tooling up to mass produce, but, as fords CEO has mentioned it is NOT too late to have a MASSIVE shift in their marketing effort of their cars. They can’t just pull products out of the air, they have what the precious management planned to build that is about to come out in the US, and the cars from other markets they can import for the car selection. The other thing they have control over is MARKETING.