Comment by venning | Hacker News Reader

Comment by venning | Hacker News Reader

This refers to sedans and coupes, excluding crossovers, trucks, SUVs, and commercial vehicles. But it does appear they will create new "silhouettes" between cars and crossovers. From the Press Release [1]:

> Building a winning portfolio and focusing on products and markets where Ford can win. For example, by 2020, almost 90 percent of the Ford portfolio in North America will be trucks, utilities and commercial vehicles. Given declining consumer demand and product profitability, the company will not invest in next generations of traditional Ford sedans for North America. Over the next few years, the Ford car portfolio in North America will transition to two vehicles – the best-selling Mustang and the all-new Focus Active crossover coming out next year. The company is also exploring new “white space” vehicle silhouettes that combine the best attributes of cars and utilities, such as higher ride height, space and versatility.

[1] https://media.ford.com/content/dam/fordmedia/North%20America...

EDIT: The press release from which all this interest is coming may only refer to Ford North America's development goals. Ford Europe is almost a different company and is responsible for most (all?) of the Focus and Fiesta's development. Perhaps Ford NA will stop bringing new sedans/coupes to market (excepting Mustang and Active) and simply import the smaller vehicles.

> vehicle silhouettes that combine the best attributes of cars and utilities, such as higher ride height, space and versatility

Subaru has been successful in this zone for decades. In fact I'd hazard to say that they set the standard for this and would be the point of comparison if Ford launches a model like that.

4WD Ranchero?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Ranchero

One can hope! Perhaps they'll remake the Ranchero on the Escape or new Ranger platform.

As a part-time Vermonter I'd also attribute Subaru's (niche) success to it being one of the first to fully embrace 4WD/AWD. Yes, along with functional body styles, as well as general higher quality.

You don't buy a Subaru to impress anyone. And that's precisely the point ;)

Subarus are very popular in Seattle, though there are two distinct groups that own them, those that want to get over the mountain passes without chains (skiers and the like), and less clued in people that just like the style. Most of the latter group wish they'd never bought a Subaru after a few years, as the repairs can be eyewatering when your head gasket go, followed by a shoddy repair at your local stealership that wrecks your engine.

Even when a head gasket replacement goes well, the gasket will degrade again in due time and your right back where you started. 300k miles in a newer Subaru without major work just isn't common.

Subaru answers a question.

Q: Can people be happy with a car that requires a $2500 repair at 100,000 miles.

A: Yes

As on I know multiple people that bought a Subaru, had to replace the head gaskets. And then later bought another Subaru. And they're happy.

$2500 is on the low end, some shops in the Seattle area with everything you are looking at near $4k.

Head gaskets are a 8-10 hour job, my mechanics shop rate is $120/hr in SF. A friend had her Subaru engine replaced for $4 in north bay.

I'm never going to take my car into get fixed in Seattle.

Its $4k minimum here on the outer fringes of the greater Seattle area to get your head gasket done if you go to a stealership (eg: using a dealership in Kent). In town you'd be up at $5k, though an independent shop will do it for $3500. Most of the latter category I outlined will never set foot in an independent shop though, due to their own shitty preconceptions.

Additionally, the oil consumption and leakage seems to start a bit after 70k miles. I don't know anyone who made it to 100k before needing the head gasket done, my aunt generally parts with Subarus right before they hit 65k due to this. Its an expensive addiction if your a skier.

Comparatively, a serpentine belt (rated to 100k, can easily do 120k) on a Lexus engine will run you $1200, and is one of the few things you'd need to change besides oil as you get up there in mileage.

Who in the hell is charging $1200 to install a serpentine belt? In every car I've seen it's a $20 part and maybe 1-2 hours of labor depending on how annoying the engine design is.

1200 is a lot but it might include other things like water pump. And definitely some engines (my Honda Civic) are very difficult to access the belt path. Still 1200...

I had a WRX and was at 125k and seeming fine (no head gasget / oil issues) but it was hit while parked and totalled.

300K miles in much of anything isn't that common, is it? I don't know that I've managed more than 140K in Honda, though that was largely city driving.

Yes; not in anything that isn't diesel.

Not quite 300K but I've personally driven several 90s/early 00s cars well past 250K. Usually obtained extremely cheaply with at least 200K already on them.

Ford basically makes all of their money on the F-series pickups, and the Escape/Explorer/Expedition SUV series.

One thing I've never quite understood is how Ford has managed to maintain a stranglehold on the police department market for my entire lifetime. Crown Victorias were ubiquitous until just a few years ago, and now seem to be universally replaced with Explorers. Outside of a few state highway patrol units that use Mustangs or Dodge Chargers.

In the '80s and early '90s, a lot of police departments were using the Chevrolet Caprice as their main vehicle.

That's another big sedan with a powerful engine and good reliability and parts availability, the latter three points being very desirable to police.

It's not just Ford, the Chevy Impala and Dodge Intrepid were also popular PD picks.

Whether they use cars vs SUV is an interesting division. Some departments in rural areas only have SUVs (since they have a lot of unpaved roads), while some departments in suburban areas issue SUVs to captains only. It varies by state, city and department, but the one thing they all have in common is that they only buy domestic.

> Crown Victorias were ubiquitous until just a few years ago

these were also in one form or another the standard for any sort of livery - taxis were very often Crown Victorias, sedan-style limos used lincon continentals which were basically the same car only the luxury version..

not an expert, but personally I think this is basically a lineage of domestically produced V8 sedans going back to the dawn of automotive times; the large installed base and relatively decent reliability / price / passenger size meant they had a good balance of functionality and lots of of parts, trained mechanics, etc. around. they were also the standard issue car of retired americans :B

probably plus union influence.

IIRC the last plant making the basic chassis (winsor ontario) for these was restructured out of existence as a result of the gov't intervention following the 2008 crisis.

> taxis were very often Crown Victorias,

Retired Crown Victorias were commonly used as taxis because they were inexpensive when purchased at auctions. When I first started driving for the taxi company (2012), they still had a few Crown Vics with police-style lights on the A-pillar [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillar_(car)

The Prius is a much better taxi than the Crown Victoria. Easier for old people to get into, hatchback, etc.

People used to travel with more luggage than a Prius can easily hold. The airlines nickel and dimed that into the past.

> Prius is a much better taxi than the Crown Victoria. .

Prius has one of the lowest operating costs of any car out there. Not just because of the good gas mileage but also the service and maintenance costs are really low.

Until you need to replace the batteries

Battery is warrantied for 10 years, 150,000 miles.

Dodge seemed to have the bulk of LE business with the Charger after ford quit building the Crown Vic from about 2008ish until the last few years. Most of the Police Departments around here went with the Charger, but now almost all of them seem to be moving to the Explorer. One of the reasons that was cited at a city council meeting was that the Explorer had a lower TCO, especially when it came to maintenance packages, and repair costs.

I'm not sure if that is the general trend everywhere or just here. Because living in a smaller city 30k in the city, 70k total in a fairly large land area county. A SUV seems like it might be more versatile in a more rural setting.

For $F to stop selling trucks in North America would be financial suicide. They sell on average an F series every 30 seconds. F series numbers for 2018 are trending up, with this March being the largest March month they've had in five years[1]. Not to mention, trucks are really expensive. A nice loaded F-150 can easily cost $40k and above.

[1] http://fordauthority.com/fmc/ford-motor-company-sales-number...

They are not. F150, SUVs, Crossovers still selling. Headline was a bit off

Yes, I was making the point they would not stop selling trucks. Typical TechCrunch writing misleading headlines to get clicks.

Disagree. People who drive trucks do not consider them a subset of cars. That's why it's the automotive industry not the car industry.

This. Automotive industry media in general had me confused with the terms. "SUVs" are absolutely cars. Most utility vehicles are cars. Even "passenger cars".

Dumb terminology but TC is perfectly in line with the industry.

Not just them but my buddy calls his Jeep SUV a "truck". Some of this is history. I have an original Jeep Cherokee which is built on a truck platform. His is a Grand, which is built on a car platform. I'm always like, yours is a car, mine's a truck. Then I realize this is dumb to argue about. Just a bad headline.

The original Cherokee is unibody, just like the Grand Cherokees have always been. What truck body is your Cherokee built on?

It depends on the SUV in question. Old school body on frame SUVs are most definitely trucks. The jacked up cars with extra head room (Ford Kuga/Escape) are not. The only reason why those things are considered trucks at all is to game the CAFE emissions requirements.

Why do you call them $F?

Ticker symbol.

It's just 'F' isn't it? Why add a dollar? And why not just more simply write 'Ford'?

'Cause you gotta be trendy, like referring to cities by their airport code.

Actually the $ helps with search engines and actually helps to indicate to me that the author meant a stock symbol instead of a bunch of random letters.

> actually helps to indicate to me that the author meant a stock symbol instead of a bunch of random letters

Which really just takes us back to... why not just write 'Ford'?

Yeah but F, o, r and d are pretty random.

Because people think by referring to a company by its ticker symbol makes them seem like they are more of an expert.

Or, it allows you to type faster and hyperlink on $TWTR.

Well if you where an employee of a listed company and did not know your employers SEDOL (or eqvielent) id start to question your commitment :-)

I have had a job where I quickly scanned the FT copy on reception as a regular thing - just in case they had brought another acquisition and our team (in house consultancy) needed to get involved with them.

I actually did work for Ford for a few years in the 90s, and I still would never refer to the company by its ticker symbol. That's just stupid.

$GOOG will show the stock info immediatelly if you searched that.

I mean, so does searching GOOG - https://www.google.com/search?q=GOOG

...or F - https://www.google.com/search?q=F

The latter certainly depends on Google's algorithms. For me, Ford stock is nowhere to be seen (unlike with "$F", for which it is shown).

You might be right.

A surefire way to get the chart is specifiying exchange and ticker, for example: nyse:crm

"F" is their ticker symbol, and $SYMBOL is commonly used to denote that SYMBOL refers to a stock.

Additionally, it usually carries the context of specifically referring to Ford stock rather than Ford the corporate entity in general.

I can't speak for nodesocket, but I noticed the $SYMBOL convention become popular to denote a ticker symbol when Twitter started treating $SYMBOL as a hashtag (often called a "cashtag") a few years ago.

https://twitter.com/twitter/status/230098997010911233

Like most twitter innovations, this convention started years before that. I noticed it with stocktwits.

I would strongly consider buying a domestic “Ute”. Here’s hoping they do it right.

I doubt it will happen. The Ute was also still made by GM ...

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