Trading on nostalgia, Ford resurrects the Taurus

BY BILL VLASIC
New York Times

DEARBORN, Mich. — After a 21-year run, the Ford Taurus was headed for the scrap heap in 2007. The Ford Motor Co. planned to retire the name, and call its new sedan the Ford Five Hundred instead.

But Ford’s new chief executive, Alan Mulally, reversed course, figuring the Taurus name still had value, even though its reputation had faltered as the car became best known as a staple of rental car fleets.

Those instincts will be tested when a new version of the Taurus begins arriving in dealer showrooms next week. How consumers respond will answer a big question for Ford: Can it make money on a full-size sedan?

“This a real acid test for our product strategy,” said James Farley, Ford’s head of global marketing.

Ford says it will exercise a new sense of discipline with the Taurus. Rather than aiming for a home-run product that sells hundreds of thousands of units _ and then be forced to offer incentives to convince shoppers to buy them all _ Ford plans to build lower volumes of the Taurus. That way, it might be able to avoid steep discounts so it can turn a profit on each one.

If the car languishes on dealer lots, though, Mulally’s fledgling turnaround could stall.

The car’s base price of $26,000 is higher than some competing models.

Farley and other Ford executives readily acknowledge that previous versions of the car were utilitarian and hardly up to the standard of comparable sedans from Toyota and Honda.

But they also are counting on the old Taurus fading from the public’s consciousness.

“Its deterioration over time has allowed us the freedom to write a business plan to more realistic expectations,” Farley said.

At its peak in the late 1980s, Taurus was the top-selling car in the United States, with more than 500,000 sales a year. The new model’s targets are somewhere from 50,000 to 75,000 annually.

Ford’s most difficult challenge may not be lingering feelings about the old Taurus, but the strength of the vehicle market.

Weak economic conditions have battered auto sales since last fall. In the first six months of this year, overall vehicle sales in the United States have fallen 35 percent from the period in 2008.

Some industry analysts say the market appears to have bottomed out and could come back slightly during the rest of the year.

“Ultimately, customers are going to judge you on whether you’re offering something new,” Farley said. “This car can’t just be a little better. It has to be demonstrably better in every respect.”

The advertising campaign, which begins next week on national television, focuses on technology. One of the new features is the “blind spot information system,” sold as an add-on, that uses radar to detect vehicles that can’t be seen in the mirror. Another is the so-called “eco-boost” engine that provides additional power without using more fuel.

Ford’s marketing managers spent a month last year interviewing three dozen of the car’s engineers to determine which features might be most compelling to potential buyers.

“The design speaks for itself, but we’ve got the goods to show when it comes to features,” said Matt VanDyke, director of Ford brand marketing.

The company has also produced a series of Web videos that compare how, for example, the paint job on the Taurus holds up in comparison to a Lexus luxury sedan.

Art Spinella, president of CNW Market Research, said that his firm has conducted five consumer focus groups on Taurus, and the results have been promising.

“It has come across extremely well,” he said. “I think the car is going to build its following slowly, but people like it as a product.”

Ford will mark the introduction of the Taurus next week at its Chicago assembly plant, where the car is being built. It is one of the only American auto factories that actually has a new product coming out.

Ford’s rollout of a new vehicle sets them apart from Chrysler and General Motors, both of which canceled or delayed several models in the months leading up to their recent bankruptcy filings.

Ford will follow the Taurus with the new Focus and Fiesta, both of which are smaller cars.

Bringing the Taurus back is just a piece of the broader strategy, Farley said, as the company shifts from a product lineup that relies heavily on trucks to one with more fuel-efficient cars.

And while the company is getting lots of positive feedback from consumers for not taking federal aid like GM and Chrysler, the goodwill alone won’t sell more cars.

“The key is to translate that goodwill into consumer shopping,” Farley said. “They may want us to succeed, but that’s not enough. We need them to get excited about the cars.”