WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF THE FORD EDGE?
David Booth says the company rejects reports the SUV is being discontinued.
The automotive blogosphere was aflame recently — at least, Ontario’s media — with the speculation Ford’s famed Oakville assembly plant is on the chopping block. Jobs could be lost (about 4,200 workers are employed at the plant on Ford Drive), enemies created (China being the usual suspect), and the psychological hit to our national automotive workplace immeasurable. The news was devastating, the headlines histrionic.
The cause of the catastrophe differed, depending on which pundit had your attention. The Edge — and its sister ship, the Lincoln Nautilus — is being discontinued, says one set of bloggers, the victim of yet another one of Ford’s strategic realignments. No, say others, the Edge isn’t going anywhere, but production is being moved to China.
Some claim it’s the result of Ford not being able to compete in the five-passenger SUV segment. Others make the argument that there’s no room in Ford’s product portfolio for so many SUVS and something had to go to make room for the upcoming Bronco. My favourite — because it doesn’t make any sense at all — were commenters who put it down to Trumpian Make America Great Again manufacturing jingoism.
So much conjecture and commotion for a rumour that began with a single, little known source: Autoforecast Solutions.
So, let’s try to make some sense of what’s really going on.
First of all, Ford Canada has already put out a statement stating the Edge isn’t being discontinued. Lauren More, the company’s VP of communications, notes the Edge “remains a critical part of Ford’s winning portfolio” and that “sales were up three per cent to nearly 140,000 Edges in the U.S. last year.”
Meanwhile, sister-ship Nautilus was Lincoln’s best-selling model in the U.S. in 2019, bagging another 31,711 sales for the mid-size SUV. These aren’t stats normally associated with cars on their way out.
Closer to home, the Edge is Ford’s second best-selling SUV in Canada, outselling the much less expensive Ecosport and, last year, roughly double that of Ford’s iconic Explorer, neither of which, as far as I know, are on anyone’s chopping block. Some pundits, at least acknowledging Ford has had some modicum of success with the Edge, nonetheless contend that Dearborn is actually retreating from a crowded segment because many of the Edge’s 19,856 sales in 2019 are to fleets.
Somehow the enormity of such an admission seems lost on them. To wit: Ford recently abandoned production of passenger cars in North America, cancelling every coupe, sedan and hatchback (save its iconic Mustang) to devote itself to the production of SUVS and pickups. It justified this “strategic realignment” by noting that cars were a declining segment with little future of rejuvenation, so its resources were better directed at the products generating more profit.
Yet here are pundits claiming one of those supposedly company-saving SUVS is headed to the gallows. If Ford was really ready to the nix the Edge, the public relations disaster — to say nothing of the investor fallout — could be disastrous. It’s one thing to say that cars in general are no longer profitable; it’s quite another to cancel an SUV in one of the hottest market segments. Essentially, Ford would be admitting it can’t compete with the imports in one of the last bastions of North American dominance.
Now, Ford and stupidity are hardly strangers — the company’s latest goof of introducing the new Ford Bronco on O.J. Simpson’s birthday truly is spectacular — but anything that smacks of admitting it can’t even compete in the very segments that, two short years ago, were being proclaimed as its saving grace would seem catastrophic.
All that said, the current political imbroglio could offer Ford “the perfect cover” for shuttering a plant, says Dennis Desrosiers, of Desrosiers Automotive Consultants. Because governments are dealing with such a tsunami of economic collapse, what would have been a focus for intervention in less emotionally charged times could now pass by comparatively unnoticed.
“Automakers have often chosen times of crisis to make their most dramatic announcements,” he says.
But Desrosiers doesn’t think shuttering Oakville is in Ford’s best interest, and suspects that it is all really a negotiating tactic.
“Ford is scheduled to begin talks with Unifor, and the threat of a plant closure is always a good opening salvo at the bargaining table.”