2008 Top vehicle sales in the U.S

Oh..............thats...............pretty.............pretty ugly.

How did a good looking, Euro looking Mk1 morph into...well that???.

*shake head*.

The only good news is that I believe that the persons responsible were probably canned by Mulally.

The worse thing is that it reminds me of these Fords:
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It doesn't really look like them, but it's got that family resemblance sort of feeling.
 
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It always bugs me that they include F-150s, Silverados, Rams and the like on these lists. Yeah, a lot of them are sold to people as personal vehicles, but a lot more are sold as working or commercial fleet vehicles. It makes the list apples and oranges. Not too many contractors buy Accords. Do European sales charts put the Ford Transit on them?

the sales figures are indeed a bit distorted. For instance, in many EU countries Porsche is selling more "trucks" than personal cars, because Cayenne can be bought with N1 option (truck classification) which makes the VAT deductible for businesses..
 
The only reason the US Ford Focus sold so well was because it was so cheap and offered very good value for money... and pretty much all the rental fleets bought some.
Yep, at least here in order to get Ford dealer business we have to provide them with a Ford for their customers if they pay for it. Same thing with GM and Chrysler. When we service any other dealer including Toyota, Honda, Subaru, VW, etc. they don't care whether we dump a Cobalt, Swift, Mazda3 or Altima on their lots. If GM dealers didn't have this clause with us, we would have a lot less Cobalts/G5s.
 
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Soectre, I didn't know but from the description on the pic, thats a Mercury Mystique?. Maybe just me but that a Mundaneo Mk2 (not such a bad thing).

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Is this always the case with US/Euro Ford Crossovers?, that they are not very good in US form another example I have no idea how good they where in the US but I had bought in 89 a two year old example of one of these had it for 4 yrs and it took a beating almost maintance free, most realiable cars I ever owned.

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Soectre, I didn't know but from the description on the pic, thats a Mercury Mystique?. Maybe just me but that a Mundaneo Mk2 (not such a bad thing).

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Not inherently bad, but both versions of the Mk2 Mondeo that were sold here in the US are known to have been deliberately sabotaged by the UAW with some covert encouragement from some Ford HQ twats. Basically, the same people who brought us such dismal failures as the roundy-round Taurus and the awfulness that was the Tempo (which is what the Contour/Mystique replaced) felt threatened by the non-Ford-North-American designs and "encouraged" the UAW to sabotage the car in the name of "preserving US jobs". The end result was a car that was even more poorly assembled than is usual for the UAW. It was a good car to drive, quite nice to look at, got rave reviews - but fell apart in a couple of years despite being assembled with parts from (mostly) the same suppliers and being constructed to the same plans. After two years, sales started to tank because of the poor reputation; today Contours are a rare sight. I see more K-cars and K-car derivatives than I do Contours.

As an example: A friend of mine bought a Mystique new in the 90s. When he went to open the glovebox *at the dealership* to check to see if the manuals were in place, the entire dashboard came away from the firewall; it hadn't been installed properly.

Is this always the case with US/Euro Ford Crossovers?, that they are not very good in US form another example I have no idea how good they where in the US but I had bought in 89 a two year old example of one of these had it for 4 yrs and it took a beating almost maintance free, most realiable cars I ever owned.

skorpio.jpg

That often happens for the ones assembled here, yes. The UAW tends to sabotage "import" designs, either intentionally and deliberately or throught their usual idiocy. However, ones like that Scorpio are a different matter. The Scorpio and the XR4Ti fell victim to the exchange rate at the time as well as a lack of marketing, not because the cars were crap (they weren't.)
 
The UAW builds the Focus here, and first year they were available I do believe there were 10 recalls within the first 2 months, and I think 25 after the year was through.

Despite that the Focus did sell...
 
Is this always the case with US/Euro Ford Crossovers?, that they are not very good in US form another example I have no idea how good they where in the US but I had bought in 89 a two year old example of one of these had it for 4 yrs and it took a beating almost maintance free, most realiable cars I ever owned.

skorpio.jpg
We still have one of those, a '92 2,9 GLX 4x4...

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And yes, I can confirm that it's pretty tough wearing. If you change it's oil, oil filter, brake pads, and other wear components it will just go on forever. The only trouble we've had with our is the aftermarket alarm system that tended to drain the battery when the car was left unused for more than a week. We also had some inevitable problems with rust lately but that's been fixed now... My only gripe is that it never got the 24v V6, only the old fashioned Cologne with clattering hydraulic lifters. The Cosworth had the 24v, but was only available as sedan and didn't come with AWD.
 
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