Or Volvos. I’m not trying to be patriotic at all, but I have a 1997 S70, it’s going to the junkyard because of a fried clutch and tons of minor collision damage (yep, old man as previous owner) so it’s just too expensive to fix it up, but rust hardly doesn’t exist, the interior is as fresh as it could be after years of chain smoking and dog chewing (something you can’t blame the car for), and the fit and finish of the parts is almost at old-merc-level…you really get the feeling that you need dynamite to make something come loose without tools. I must say that I am impressed, sure, the old 240 was a tank but it also had an interior as cozy as one so…
I was doing an asymmetric design, and this “thing” was posted on discord…
Yeah this is only a concept (For Pekin 2018 autoshow) , but wtf, are Citroën designers on drugs?
7 Likes
They’re replacing perfectly fine cars by crossovers for the heck of it. They must be.
3 Likes
Isn’t that a company tradition? Only before they had better drugs 
3 Likes
Yeah buts not a Citroen thing. That’s an industry wide phenomenon right now and Ford is one-upping that hardcore by replacing ALL their perfectly fine cars with crossovers, in the US that is to say.
1 Like
The schemantics of how headlights would work on that thing are hurting my brain, good Lord. How does that even work on an actual road? Unless it’s a British road, it wouldn’t be much of use…
Yeah, but you can spend an extra $1000 to make a crossover rather than a car, then charge an extra $10,000 for it when selling it. I personally dislike crossovers with a passion, but they’re what’s bringing in money so I understand why Ford made that decision.
4 Likes
Semi-offtopic but I’ve never heard the word “crossover” used in Finland before Ford did just recently. Even the likes of the Hyundai Kona and Kia Stonic have been “pieni katumaasturi” (small SUV or directly translated “small street-offroader”), even the Opel Adam Rocks is called a “mini katumaasturi” but the new Fiesta Active has just started it’s ad campaign here and they’re just butchering “crossover” instead. I’ve heard it once here, I don’t wanna hear it again.
I used to like crossovers, they got decent enough fuel mileage, could handle a bit rougher terrain, they used to be a decent compromise between a proper 4x4 and a minivan/station wagon. Now it seems they are nothing more than bloated cars, or minivans with normal doors without decent capability for either.
Oh I completely understand the economics of it, or perhaps more accurately, I comprehend them; I will get to that in a second. But it doesn’t make the decision any less abhorrent in my eyes as I too hate crossovers. Which, incidentally, is great tie in to my schpeel on the economics of it.
I represent a customer base – a large one in fact evidence in the booming sales of the Ford Fusion and Focus – that Ford is now no longer going to be producing a vehicle for. That is outright alienation and straight up giving customers to other brands. Admittedly sales of the Fusion and Focus of late have been slowing and their profitability is thus decreased, especially on the Focus which, lets be honest, is probably selling at a loss on the base trims. That being said, by giving up those customers, their profit margins might be higher but their total revenue is going to be decreased, so what I see is them breaking even and/or decreasing the size of their business. And that is especially true since gas prices have been shooting for the Moon in the last year or so. You know how it goes – gas prices go up; big car sales go down. Which means Ford might be headed for the red and have to start worrying about how to keep the lights on. We’ve been through this enough times now, I don’t think we can expect any other outcome.
TL;DR - I comprehend Ford’s reasoning. But I don’t understand it.
1 Like
MG has really taken the role of the whole Chinese car brand thing pretty well:
13 Likes
Really a sad fate for a brand like MG…
7 Likes
If that’s the case, then why doesn’t MG’s parent company just consign the entire MG brand to the history books?
MG and Rover was what was left of the whole British Leyland empire when everything went belly up in 2005. The “parent company” of MG today is chinese SAIC… go figure.
1 Like
SAIC don’t actually own the Rover name, that’s owned by JLR, hence why Roewe exists.
3 Likes
Exactly. If I remember correctly, Ford aquired the Rover name completely when buying Land Rover after BMW giving up on MG/Rover. Phoenix just was given the rights to use the Rover name on the cars. A little bit like what happened to Saab where Saab aerospace are the owner of the Saab brand name, and GM was given the rights by them to brand the cars as Saab. After all the turns, Saab aerospace decided that Nevs should not be given the rights to do that, so even if Nevs even gets production going again, there will be no Saab branded cars anymore.
A similar situation exists with Roll Royce. VW May have bought the car company but the name still belongs to the Aerospace company who licenced it out to BMW
2 Likes
MG seems to sell very well in China, they don’t really care much about us Westerners anymore. They’re just making cars that sell there.
1 Like
-That’s it! NO MORE RERUNS OF THE “STAR WARS” SAGA FOR ANY OF THE DESIGN COMMITEE MEMBERS FROM NOW ON!
3 Likes