Only 700 Falcons sold last month. Why bother?

[JimmyXR6T04]

Nah, probably not... That's what i like about this place, it's rather mature!

Don't think there would be anyone on here that would actually like to see the Falcon go.

[Troutman]

Falcon remains the all-time best-selling car in this country and has tremendous historical and cultural significance. What bothers me even more than the struggling of the car is the change in society that it reflects - an easy-come-easy-go disposable mindset. Excluding the utes, I can only name 2 cars on the top 10 best seller list that even existed 15 years ago. This implies heritage is actually a bad thing to today's buyers.

Some things we might want to think twice about before throwing away.

[Ausmartin1]

Falcon remains the all-time best-selling car in this country and has tremendous historical and cultural significance. What bothers me even more than the struggling of the car is the change in society that it reflects - an easy-come-easy-go disposable mindset. Excluding the utes, I can only name 2 cars on the top 10 best seller list that even existed 15 years ago. This implies heritage is actually a bad thing to today's buyers.

Some things we might want to think twice about before throwing away.

What - great heritage? I bought my new Falcon years ago based on Money per Sheetmetal Sq'd and it proved to be a bad quality choice.

Only recent year Falcon examples have been acceptable - I know as Falcon Owner the Obsolete technology along with poor quality and support that went into these cars following the Falcon history.

At least with Holden they did have "Sudden" improvement moments as they needed to be able to export, lifting their game helped consumers vs the things going on at Ford Manufacturing Australia were piss poor and it has now come back to bite them like surprise skeletons.

Agree - sad,
but the buying public have had their past tastes and now moving on...... (Ironically when there product has shown signs of improvement).

[C4B]

Falcon remains the all-time best-selling car in this country and has tremendous historical and cultural significance. What bothers me even more than the struggling of the car is the change in society that it reflects - an easy-come-easy-go disposable mindset. Excluding the utes, I can only name 2 cars on the top 10 best seller list that even existed 15 years ago. This implies heritage is actually a bad thing to today's buyers.

Some things we might want to think twice about before throwing away.

The only people to blame for the ultimate demise of Falcon and Commodore are the decision makers at Ford Australia and Holden who, in the face of high fuel prices and demand for physically smaller cars, continued to produce large vehicles with big engines. Lets face it, the 2013 Commodore and Falcon are basically the same car they were producing 30+ years ago when people were buying XD Falcons and VC commodores.

The question we should be asking is how on earth both platforms have survived the last few years......

[bozodos]

And in that regard we should be thankful that we've had affordable LS powered sedans for so many years!

[Jag530G]

The question we should be asking is how on earth both platforms have survived the last few years......

Its amazing that the same basic formula survived in this country for so the long. The large RWD 6cyl family car, from 1950 thereabouts when Holden actually built enough FXs to get sales leadership to the 2011 VE, the biggest seller every year has been a Holden and Ford large RWD 6 cyl for 61 years.

I've long thought that the car industry took the soft option in the 1980s building sedans protected by high tariffs rather than a 4WDs only protected by 5% tariffs. Its ridiculous that Australia, a vast country with a pretty poor road network, didn't start building an SUV until 2003 Territory. To me that is the great what if, what if Ford ploughed some of the profits of the high selling XF Falcon and KB Laser into building an American market SUV here...

And here's something really controversial. What if Holden, instead of spending money on developing the V2 Monaro, one tonner, crewman and a half baked SUV in the form of the Adventra (sorry Adventra guys but the market spoke on this one) and instead spent the combined development dollars on a Territory style SUV on the shorter Commodore sedan wheelbase with the option of the VM Motori diesel?

Cheers, Matthew

[IJ.]

Matt, what does a Territory have that an Adventra doesn't?

[C4B]

Matt, what does a Territory have that an Adventra doesn't?

Some semblance of fuel economy ;-)

[IJ.]

Some semblance of fuel economy ;-)

Addy's aren't bad if you keep them out of the City

[Jag530G]

Matt, what does a Territory have that an Adventra doesn't?

Packaging. Higher but shorter body, means you can have the passengers sitting on higher seats needing less leg room and therefore fit 3 decent rows of seats. Compare an Adventra: when sitting in the driver's seat where your knees are vs how far further forward your feet are and compare that to a proper SUV such as the Territory. The higher seat of an SUV means that your feet don't need to be as further ahead of your knees, allows for better packaging.

The other more trivial reason is reason is style, people don't really want a jacked up wagon, they want an SUV shape. The jacked up station wagon body was a bit of a market segment dead end (apart from Subaru), Audi gave up on the All Road because buyers wanted the Q-cars.

If the Adventra had been built on the sedan wheelbase (like the Terry on the Falcon w/b) and had a higher body and looked less like a station wagon it would have been much more successful IMHO.

Cheers, Matthew

[Jag530G]

That's the other sad thing for Ford, if they had a diesel for the Terry from the start and sorted out the quality issues with the front suspension, they would have absolutely owned the SUV market and probably would still in business past 2016. Ford caught Toyota with its pants down by making the 2WD Terry, people wanted the SUV shape but not the 4WD capability or fuel penalty, brilliant idea. It was in response to the 2WD Terry that Toyota introduced the 2WD version of the Kluger.

Cheers, Matthew

[IJ.]

Packaging. Higher but shorter body, means you can have the passengers sitting on higher seats needing less leg room and therefore fit 3 decent rows of seats. Compare an Adventra: when sitting in the driver's seat where your knees are vs how far further forward your feet are and compare that to a proper SUV such as the Territory. The higher seat of an SUV means that your feet don't need to be as further ahead of your knees, allows for better packaging.

The other more trivial reason is reason is style, people don't really want a jacked up wagon, they want an SUV shape. The jacked up station wagon body was a bit of a market segment dead end (apart from Subaru), Audi gave up on the All Road because buyers wanted the Q-cars.

If the Adventra had been built on the sedan wheelbase (like the Terry on the Falcon w/b) and had a higher body and looked less like a station wagon it would have been much more successful IMHO.

Cheers, Matthew

Thanks Matt, wasn't being argumentative never even sat in a Territory, I like the Addy because of the fact it's just a jacked up wagon, I think Holden would have done much better if they had just used the CrossTrac system in a standard Wagon and kept prices reasonable!

[Marco]

The only people to blame for the ultimate demise of Falcon and Commodore are the decision makers at Ford Australia and Holden who, in the face of high fuel prices and demand for physically smaller cars, continued to produce large vehicles with big engines. Lets face it, the 2013 Commodore and Falcon are basically the same car they were producing 30+ years ago when people were buying XD Falcons and VC commodores.

The question we should be asking is how on earth both platforms have survived the last few years......

If you were running these businesses, what would you have done? Consider the market as it stood in 2001/2 when Holden was making decisions about the VE. VX was the best selling car in the country by miles; in fact selling at all time highs and producing a good return on investment. That continued a long run of being the best or second best selling car in the country for the previous 50 years.

So in considering a replacement for your signature product, the one that the rest of your business depends upon, would you have continued to do what had worked so well for your company in the past, and which the market appeared to still want, or would you have taken a punt on something different?

If it was my business, I'd have stuck with the proven formula for success. If I was making the decision today, on the other hand, I'd be looking to build something off the GM shelf and looking for a way to build an SUV off either that platform or the Cruze platform. (I've read that the next Captiva will share its platform with the next Cruze, and you would think that GM is probably working on an SUV based on the Epsilon II platform that the Malibu, Impala, Insignia etc sit on to replace some of its current US market products like the Chevy Traverse).

In hindsight we might question whether Holden was right to spend big on an all-new platform rather than say use the GM Sigma platform; but I can't see the justification other than in hindsight for not building the VE.

[Marco]

That's the other sad thing for Ford, if they had a diesel for the Terry from the start and sorted out the quality issues with the front suspension, they would have absolutely owned the SUV market and probably would still in business past 2016. Ford caught Toyota with its pants down by making the 2WD Terry, people wanted the SUV shape but not the 4WD capability or fuel penalty, brilliant idea. It was in response to the 2WD Terry that Toyota introduced the 2WD version of the Kluger.

Ford had one advantage with the 2WD Territory that Toyota didn't: at the time it was introduced IIRC there was a different tariff rate for 4WDs (lower) than for passenger cars. Nobody sold a 2WD SUV at the time because the extra import duty payable meant that its price would be the same as the 4WD version. Ford obviously didn't have this problem...

[Jag530G]

Thanks Matt, wasn't being argumentative never even sat in a Territory, I like the Addy because of the fact it's just a jacked up wagon, I think Holden would have done much better if they had just used the CrossTrac system in a standard Wagon and kept prices reasonable!

You like the Adventra because its got a V8!!!