Whats the big picture ?

[Bossxr8]

Originally Posted by 351capri

Maybe im not that well informed, or just living under a rock, but ive just found out that you cant buy a new falcon xr8! Was informed of this by a mate at a recent bbq and just checked out the ford aust web site to confirm.Am i missing something? or is ford aust slowly culling models off their lineup. First they can the fairlane /ltd ( to my knowledge, popular in the hire car, funeral and now prestige taxi industries, as well as the private sector.) Then they can the falcon wagon (also popular in the taxi and funeral industry, and as a sales rep vehicle, and as private family car.) And on the wagon, the dedicated lpg model is definately sought after by those that need the exrta space with the benefit of economy, me included. And now the model which took off in the ba/bf era on the coat tails of on track success in the supercars, appears to have been killed off. you cant get a v8 sedan unless you can afford an FPV, and their pricing scares off the average guy who could probably afford a car in the $40,000 bracket ,but not $60,000. Can someone please explain why ford are sacrificing all of these potential sales.

There's nothing sinister about it, the cars they cut from the range just weren't selling in big enough numbers to justify future development costs to upgrade them.

Fairlane/LTD used to be big sellers, but since the Euro stuff started to become more affordable the numbers had continued to drop until they were barely selling 200 a month. Holden have already killed Statesman and Caprice will be next, they are down to less than 150 a month here, they export a few but come the next model I doubt wether the LWB Holdens will continue. Its a dead market now.

Wagon was selling about 400 a month nearly all to fleets, but it needed a lot of money spent on it bringing it up to spec, and once again the numbers just didn't justify it, not when they have another wagon in the Territory selling 4 times that amount.

XR8 was a pretty slow seller in the end, emissions killed it off as the 5.4 couldn't be bought up to Euro 4. They were working on a Coyote 5 litre for it but they put the program on hold early 2011 and hasn't been touched since.

And people need to forget about the rumours that Falcon will become a Taurus, it won't. Thats been rejected already apparently.