I didn’t say that Europe doesn’t have tough winter conditions as well in some parts. The difference is that these conditions are not prevalent in the larger population centers. There are few places in Europe that have large populations, winter temperatures of -30 and summer temperatures of +40 like Chicago (for instance).

On top of this, Americans have a much different attitude towards maintenance compared to Scandinavians. I think that this has a lot to do with the relatively low price of cars in the US. Spending $4,000 to replace the front suspension on a $20,000 Contour just doesn’t go down well. I imagine that things are different when you are paying three to four times more for a new car.
Faced with such an invoice, the average American would trade the car in immediately. This leads to low resale values, a bad reputation, and poor sales (which succinctly describes Ford’s non-truck business in the US).

Come to think of it, I hardly ever see any Contours anymore. I do see a lot of 10 year old Accords, Camrys and Impalas.

There’s a reason why the successful automakers (Toyota and Honda) sell entirely different models in North America. My point is that Ford should look at their past history of selling European cars in the US, and then look at what the Japanese are doing instead. It should be obvious to them that designing “world cars” can be no more than a stopgap measure, and that they should focus on tailoring their cars to the customers’ needs in the longer term.

The U.S. is much the same, except for some of the southern States with favourable climate (e.g. Florida) and/or billions of oil dollars (e.g. Texas). I have been all throughout Europe, and the roads in any given county – western or eastern Europe – are in far better shape.

And people with silly expensive cars often put their cars in their garage and take them out when the roads are clear due to the fact that the cars are just that.. silly expensive.

And the old Mondeo was a disaster I´ll give you that.. But it was a disaster here to. Just like the old Ford Fiesta, Ford Escort etc.

So please Bernard.. Look over the fence and get facts before you write.

Cheers from a very Swedish and European Tom

2. I saw my first Ford Flex yesterday. What a shock! It already looks 20 years old…and it’s an overweight, underpowered gas guzzler, again. Ford can only get better by building some of it’s European cars in NA…and fast. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:2009_Ford_Flex_Limited.jpg
3. Intresting comment about Fiat which I forgot to add on my 9-1 post. When you look at what Fiat did with GM’s 2 billion $, makes you wonder what could have been accomplished had GM stuck it out. But then, perhaps it was just to much of a culture shock for them to work together, although they did form a successful alliance building diesels.

This led to cars like the Contour (European Mondeo), which had a terrible reputation for reliability because its suspension would fall apart after going over a few potholes (something you can’t avoid anywhere north of Texas). Nobody in the Midwest wants to spend thousands on control arms just so they can save hundreds on gas.

Here in Canada, BMW’s and Mercedes’s dissappear after the first snowfall and reappear around Easter. That includes SUV’s like the X5 and GL.
That may be fine for the people who can afford it, but it just won’t work with Ford’s middle class target market.

/Tom

And if we didn’t became Swedish 1658 (350 years ago this year!), that old wagon factory in Södertälje would probably not have merged with that small wagon factory Scania.