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Originally Posted by focaljet-1
That was my whole point, to change Mercury from its "current form". But, there is not enough money there to do it.
The mission statement of Mercury from it's inception was to be "near-luxury".
It's just my opinion. But, today I would position Mercury, as "performance luxury". I've always used the phase "Ford's Acura".
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and then what do you do with Lincoln, which is fords competition to Acura...
Or Volvo which is also a "near luxury" brand
Make Lincoln pure luxury/performance and go after Cadi, BMW, etc...
Then where do you put jaguar...
there is just too much overlap in their brands.
You have too many.
Ford also needs to be the "mainstream" brand NOT the value brand the "average" American is not buying a kia rio price car, the "average" car in the US is $36,000. They need to position ford in a more "average" position like toyota. Toyota has 1 or 2 cheep cars and then everything else with options is close to $30k.
Ford needs cheap brand against scion, an "average brand" which SHOULD be ford. and a luxury performance brand to go up against bmw (jaguar)
They already made the decision to put Lincoln against Acura, Mazda is performance, Volvo is family/safe, euro (and could probably replace Lincoln) and Jaguar needs to be upscale to replace Aston. Land rover is there dedicated SUV brand which can be successful as the Hummer brand is for GM, and Jeep is for DamlerChrisler
Also the thing I dislike making mercury the “American ford Europe” is as small as it is, they will be spending money re-badging the cars with new grills, logos etc… and will be hurting global recognition. In the modern car market it is MUCH better to have a global presence, something GM and DamlerChrisler are not struggling to do. They are re-branding, and introducing there brands to Europe, something ford has a big advantage with. MANY of there brands are ALLREADY known the world over and have global recognition.