(GR86) Second Generation FR-S/BRZ insider info...

[RToyo86]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

Not sure I follow. Pretty much any modern car can be driven 10 years without any large concerns, unless you are driving some unusually high number of miles (and by high I mean more than I do, which is around 20K miles a year on my DD and another 15K or so on a secondary vehicle).

It wouldn't be anything unusually high. She put 180k km on her 2011 focus. I originally steered her towards the Impreza for the added practicality of AWD.

In the end it was narrowed down to the civic, Jetta and Impreza. Interestingly the new Jetta has a non intercooled turbo 1.4L.
Color options were her deciding factor which I decided wasn't worth arguing over. Wouldn't even look at the car if it was in black, silver or white. I ended up finding a single dark blue Impreza 5speed in the entire city.

We just picked it up from the body shop yesterday. I'm about to have words with the dealer for the body shops poor attempt at fixing a scratch. Instead of one scratch there is now a area around the scratch with sanding marks, marring and swirls around it.

[RToyo86]

Originally Posted by Tcoat

My wife outright refused to even look at the American brands when we were car shopping.
I finally convinced her to leave her big SUVs behind as overkill and she got a fully loaded, top trim, 17 Impreza hatch. That lasted about two years and she wanted back into an SUV. She ended up with a great deal on a low miles 18 Outback lease return. I doubt she will want anything but a Subaru SUV for life now.
Even if one of the American brands was acceptable to her they could not even come close to features for the price.

Subaru seems to do well blending basic with enough features while keeping cost down. She got everything she wanted for around 24k. Plus I was able to get her some incentives and add ons like cargo liner and some free oil changes.

The car has no guts when you put your foot down, but it drives quite smoothly with the longer gearing from the 5spd. Should be perfect for her, she has a led foot getting up to speed.

[AnalogMan]

Originally Posted by wbradley

Just going to leave this here. The energy crisis really changed domestic cars, but the evolution was stubbornly slow. Imagine having emissions standards slapped on top and now your flagship muscle car puts out an astonishing 139 HP. When I was around 10, I remember this car on display inside the shopping mall and being impressed it had the new orange turn markers. Turns out, that might have been it's best quality other than providing transportation.

So, all you twins fans that complain they aren't getting what they want, good thing you weren't trading your early 70's Cobra for the next generation.

Most of the malaise era cars were pretty miserable mechanical abominations, but at least they had some quirky personality (including the Mustang II).

[AnalogMan]

Originally Posted by soundman98

Ford does still sell the mustang... So they do still have a car

Yes, of course you're right. I forgot about the Mustang (duh, I have a Mustang in my garage, but the hard-drive access in my aging 60-something brain doesn't work so well anymore). I somehow don't think of the Mustang as a regular 'passenger car'. It's Ford's 'sports car' offering, the closest they can come to a 'halo' car (though what's the point if everything else in the lineup is some sort of truck/SUV/crossover thing?)

I think the Fusion has been canned in the US after the 2020 model year along with the rest of the passenger car lineup.

This was Ford's previous CEO Jim Hackett's brilliant idea: reduce volumes and increase unit profit. He wanted to sell fewer units and make more money on each one. So, his brainchild was to cancel everything but the big sellers. He would have been happy to reduce Ford to only selling the F150.

I think the Ford family is positioning the company to sell it to VW (who need a solution to their reputation/credibility problem in the US because of the dieselgate fiasco), and using BMW as a backup bidder. Both of them would love to add trucks, specifically the F150, to their product line.

Other than Bill Ford Jr., I think the Ford family is tired of the headaches of unions, supplier issues, tariffs, pension funds, pandemic, and other hassles of actually making things. Unfortunately, the laws, regulations, and simply the fast-buck culture in this county make it much easier to do financial speculation than manufacturing. The Ford family can make more money with less effort by having their bankers shuffle paper than continuing to endure the hemorrhoids of manufacturing cars.

The Ford family can’t sell much stock on the open market without cratering the price (all those pesky SEC disclosure regulations). The only way they can cash everything out and for a decent price is if another company buys them out.

If they weren’t happy with their car sales and were committed to the business, instead of abandoning them why not improve them and make products customers actually want to buy? In what universe is it a sound business strategy to walk away from a significant portion of your revenues and gift it to the competition? With the insane hope that car buyers will simply switch to SUVs/CUV’s? That didn’t happen, though they probably got some nice fruit baskets from the folks at Hyundai. Ford’s continually dropping stock price suggests the lizards on Wall Street saw through the charade as well.

By cutting employees, cars, and costs, Hackett tried to ‘streamline’ the company to make it easier to be swallowed. Hackett hinted he would have been happy to sell just the F150, under the ruse of focusing on ‘maximizing profit margins’. Neither VW nor BMW need or want Ford’s cars. They have plenty of their own. They both want the F150. VW would have the added value of being able to sell its cars through the Ford franchise, sidestepping their reputational problems.

VW has made several investments in and signed alliances with Ford, for autonomous cars, electric vehicles, and joint production of commercial vehicles including a new medium pickup truck. They are already working together in several areas. Then it will be “Mustang by VW” (if they keep the model at all).

It's been a revolving door for CEO's at Ford ever since Alan Mulally left. His successor Mark Fields only lasted a couple of years, and likewise Hackett (who I think will go down in history as one of the worst car company CEOs ever) also only lasted a couple of years as well. Neither of them could pump up the stock price the way the Ford family wanted. It'll be interesting to see how long Jim Farley lasts. One of my friends recently retired as an executive from Ford after 50 years with the company and has some interesting stories about Farley and his 'management' and 'interpersonal' styles.

[Jordanwolf]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

Not sure I follow. Pretty much any modern car can be driven 10 years without any large concerns, unless you are driving some unusually high number of miles (and by high I mean more than I do, which is around 20K miles a year on my DD and another 15K or so on a secondary vehicle).

You drive for a living?

[Tcoat]

Originally Posted by AnalogMan

Yes, of course you're right. I forgot about the Mustang (duh, I have a Mustang in my garage, but the hard-drive access in my aging 60-something brain doesn't work so well anymore). I somehow don't think of the Mustang as a regular 'passenger car'. It's Ford's 'sports car' offering, the closest they can come to a 'halo' car (though what's the point if everything else in the lineup is some sort of truck/SUV/crossover thing?)

I think the Fusion has been canned in the US after the 2020 model year along with the rest of the passenger car lineup.

This was Ford's previous CEO Jim Hackett's brilliant idea: reduce volumes and increase unit profit. He wanted to sell fewer units and make more money on each one. So, his brainchild was to cancel everything but the big sellers. He would have been happy to reduce Ford to only selling the F150.

I think the Ford family is positioning the company to sell it to VW (who need a solution to their reputation/credibility problem in the US because of the dieselgate fiasco), and using BMW as a backup bidder. Both of them would love to add trucks, specifically the F150, to their product line.

Other than Bill Ford Jr., I think the Ford family is tired of the headaches of unions, supplier issues, tariffs, pension funds, pandemic, and other hassles of actually making things. Unfortunately, the laws, regulations, and simply the fast-buck culture in this county make it much easier to do financial speculation than manufacturing. The Ford family can make more money with less effort by having their bankers shuffle paper than continuing to endure the hemorrhoids of manufacturing cars.

The Ford family can’t sell much stock on the open market without cratering the price (all those pesky SEC disclosure regulations). The only way they can cash everything out and for a decent price is if another company buys them out.

If they weren’t happy with their car sales and were committed to the business, instead of abandoning them why not improve them and make products customers actually want to buy? In what universe is it a sound business strategy to walk away from a significant portion of your revenues and gift it to the competition? With the insane hope that car buyers will simply switch to SUVs/CUV’s? That didn’t happen, though they probably got some nice fruit baskets from the folks at Hyundai. Ford’s continually dropping stock price suggests the lizards on Wall Street saw through the charade as well.

By cutting employees, cars, and costs, Hackett tried to ‘streamline’ the company to make it easier to be swallowed. Hackett hinted he would have been happy to sell just the F150, under the ruse of focusing on ‘maximizing profit margins’. Neither VW nor BMW need or want Ford’s cars. They have plenty of their own. They both want the F150. VW would have the added value of being able to sell its cars through the Ford franchise, sidestepping their reputational problems.

VW has made several investments in and signed alliances with Ford, for autonomous cars, electric vehicles, and joint production of commercial vehicles including a new medium pickup truck. They are already working together in several areas. Then it will be “Mustang by VW” (if they keep the model at all).

It's been a revolving door for CEO's at Ford ever since Alan Mulally left. His successor Mark Fields only lasted a couple of years, and likewise Hackett (who I think will go down in history as one of the worst car company CEOs ever) also only lasted a couple of years as well. Neither of them could pump up the stock price the way the Ford family wanted. It'll be interesting to see how long Jim Farley lasts. One of my friends recently retired as an executive from Ford after 50 years with the company and has some interesting stories about Farley and his 'management' and 'interpersonal' styles.

The Fusion was canned but they revived it for one more year so it hangs on until the end of 2021. I would guess that it fell someplace into it's parts order contract where it was going to cost them more to cancel than to just make the cars for another year.

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by Jordanwolf

You drive for a living?

No, it's a hobby I guess....

I drive between 80 and 100 miles a work day. My standard commute is 40 miles one way which works out as a base of 20,800 miles per year.

As a family we almost never fly anywhere. All our vacations, etc are road trips of between 500 and 1000 miles. We also often travel for short weekend jaunts. I also have my airplane hangered about 40 miles from home and from work so I usually go there a couple of times a week.

It adds up.

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by RToyo86

It wouldn't be anything unusually high. She put 180k km on her 2011 focus. I originally steered her towards the Impreza for the added practicality of AWD. .

MomHawk's decision tree for a car is much more straightforward than mine. Her's is:

Is it a Mustang? (Must answer Yes)
Is it a Convertible? (Must answer Yes)
Is it Red? (Must answer Yes)

Decision made.

She can drive an MT, but doesn't really care if it does or doesn't have one. She sometimes cares about the Infotainment but is fully aware that can be changed so isn't a deciding factor.

[RToyo86]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

Speaking of wagons, another one just popped up on BaT.

That looks like the perfect grocery getter that you can also toss a couple baby car seats into.

[Jordanwolf]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

No, it's a hobby I guess....

I drive between 80 and 100 miles a work day. My standard commute is 40 miles one way which works out as a base of 20,800 miles per year.

As a family we almost never fly anywhere. All our vacations, etc are road trips of between 500 and 1000 miles. We also often travel for short weekend jaunts. I also have my airplane hangered about 40 miles from home and from work so I usually go there a couple of times a week.

It adds up.

Crazy. I drive annually for work and leisure what you do for work alone and the people I know consider me to drive a lot, as I frequently do random drives every month or so in search of windy country roads.

[Dzmitry]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

No, it's a hobby I guess....

I drive between 80 and 100 miles a work day. My standard commute is 40 miles one way which works out as a base of 20,800 miles per year.

As a family we almost never fly anywhere. All our vacations, etc are road trips of between 500 and 1000 miles. We also often travel for short weekend jaunts. I also have my airplane hangered about 40 miles from home and from work so I usually go there a couple of times a week.

It adds up.

I drive quite a bit myself with the couple cars. Work has me doing 55-60 miles each way and then I drive plenty for fun and between friends/family aside from that. Bought the BRZ and told the dealer I'd be putting on easily less than 10k a year. I'm at 23k in 1.5 years already and I put another 30-40k on an old civic a year.

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by Jordanwolf

Crazy. I drive annually for work and leisure what you do for work alone and the people I know consider me to drive a lot, as I frequently do random drives every month or so in search of windy country roads.

Yea, in the last three weekends we did two 570 mile round trips to see our Grand-daughter in Talahassee. One was a day trip, just because we had nothing else going on (left at 5am back by midnight, spent 6 hours there), and one was an overnighter for her birthday party.

We are getting into a bind with our cars though. Usually we have them spread out in mileage, but we now have two that are over 170,000 miles (the FRS and the Suburban) and one that is over 150,000 (the '05 Mustang). MomHawk won't give up the Mustang, she plans to keep it forever so I have to decide soon which of the other two I replace. We'll likely downsize the Suburban since our kids no longer travel on all trips with us.

None of them are giving us problems right now so we will just wait until one fails and go from there. Odds are on the Suburban, we bought it used, and it's lead a rough life.

[Spuds]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

Yea, in the last three weekends we did two 570 mile round trips to see our Grand-daughter in Talahassee. One was a day trip, just because we had nothing else going on (left at 5am back by midnight, spent 6 hours there), and one was an overnighter for her birthday party.

We are getting into a bind with our cars though. Usually we have them spread out in mileage, but we now have two that are over 170,000 miles (the FRS and the Suburban) and one that is over 150,000 (the '05 Mustang). MomHawk won't give up the Mustang, she plans to keep it forever so I have to decide soon which of the other two I replace. We'll likely downsize the Suburban since our kids no longer travel on all trips with us.

None of them are giving us problems right now so we will just wait until one fails and go from there. Odds are on the Suburban, we bought it used, and it's lead a rough life.

Do you ever need to tow anything?

[Tcoat]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

Yea, in the last three weekends we did two 570 mile round trips to see our Grand-daughter in Talahassee. One was a day trip, just because we had nothing else going on (left at 5am back by midnight, spent 6 hours there), and one was an overnighter for her birthday party.

We are getting into a bind with our cars though. Usually we have them spread out in mileage, but we now have two that are over 170,000 miles (the FRS and the Suburban) and one that is over 150,000 (the '05 Mustang). MomHawk won't give up the Mustang, she plans to keep it forever so I have to decide soon which of the other two I replace. We'll likely downsize the Suburban since our kids no longer travel on all trips with us.

None of them are giving us problems right now so we will just wait until one fails and go from there. Odds are on the Suburban, we bought it used, and it's lead a rough life.