Why bother competing in the midsize sedan segment anymore?
If you’re in the market for a midsize sedan, it’s a fantastic time to buy. Both the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry have been recently redesigned, the Hyundai Sonata was just refreshed, the Mazda6 is set to get a turbocharger, and Ford will happily sell you an all-wheel-drive Fusion that makes 380 lb-ft of torque. If you’re an automaker trying to sell midsize sedans, however, it hasn’t been the best year. Sales are down across the board, with several models posting year-over-year sales drops of more than 20 percent. But instead of redesigning the Fusion to better compete with the Camry and Accord, it looks like Ford might give up on selling it in the U.S. altogether.
Our first hint came last week when Ford confirmed it plans to stop building the Fusion in its Hermosillo, Mexico, factory. Our first thought was that Ford would import the Fusion from China, but that was quickly shut down. “We have no plans to export the next-generation Fusion/Mondeo from China to North America and Europe,” a representative told us in an email. As Automotive News points out, assuming Ford isn’t lying, that means it would have to find a factory in a different country to produce the North American Fusion or stop selling it here.
But when Automotive News asked Jim Hackett, Ford’s new CEO, if he thought the Fusion had a future in the U.S., Hackett responded by saying, “I’m giving you a hint.” Considering that he’d just been talking about no longer producing the Fusion in North America and not importing it from China, it sure sounds like Hackett was saying-without-actually-saying he doesn’t expect to sell the next Fusion in the ‘States.
Source: Automotive News (Subscription required)