6 posts tagged “ford focus”

Ford Focus 2.0

Ford Focus 2.0 rear view

Here is the Ford Focus that I was lent, but these are not the film shots, just low-res phone-camera ones. It looks a lot nicer than the previous model and is better screwed together. From the front, it has the Ford family look that started with the Galaxy and S-Max, and for the first time in many years, there’s now a consistent grille between Focus, Mondeo and Falcon (E241). It’s a typical Ford strategy to make the base model look more high-line at facelift time, and this is no exception. Plus I love the colour.

I was booked on a 7.30 p.m. flight last night, which is why I landed at 11 p.m.
   Fog closed Auckland Airport earlier yesterday so I was stuck waiting for a few hours. But at least I got something out of the fog: thanks to it, we managed to get some good shots of the Ford Focus that FoMoCo lent me.
   Other folks weren’t so fortunate.
   I saw a lady travelling with her two daughters from London, England, who had been flying since Wednesday on London–Dubai–Singapore–Auckland–Wellington tickets, and she only faced a delay when getting to New Zealand.
   And Ray Nelson and his wife, heading to Christchurch for a headstone unveiling ceremony, who had been there for 12 hours all told, flying up from Tauranga.
   Ray, his wife and I had plenty of good conversation about Māoridom and language, which fascinated me.
   I also saw a St Mark’s alumna, who filled me in with what’s been happening at our school. It seems there was another principal v. Synod bust-up.
   I won’t name her in case there are repercussions but she is diplomatic and I am reading between the lines rather than attributing the news directly to her.
   All I know is that as an alumnus I am not delighted with the way the Church sometimes treats the school principals, especially one who has done as good a job as Tina Leach.
   Tina and I worked closely together on various school matters ranging from the alumni groups to the yearbook over her term, and I really felt she managed to stretch the budget and offer the kids amazing opportunities.
   I’m going to pay the school a surprise visit as a long-standing old boy and size up this acting principal, and see if I can find out more. But it sure sounds like petty politics to me, the kind that churches only do so well.

Don’t you hate it when the place you are staying at has dodgy wifi and no SMTP server? It’s probably the most troublesome wifi I’ve had ever: I can’t connect yet three viruses managed to come through via the wifi system. At least the weather is nice, as is my lovely 2008 Ford Focus 2·0 organized by the lovely Brie Elder of the Ford Motor Company.
   I’m also back at my regular haunt at the Cintra Lane apartments, where I always stayed at the beginning of the century. I went to other properties between 2005 and 2007 out of curiosity, journalistic duty and the Cintra’s owners’ decision not to upgrade to broadband. Now I am back, I notice that they at least have wifi installed, but it’s very patchy.
   Still, better patchy wifi than dial-up, my antivirus (AVG on this laptop) and spyware scanners are up-to-date, and I love having my familiar penthouse view (Richard Gere: ‘It’s the best’) again. Whomever runs the place now has upgraded or replaced the TV, TV channels, DVD player, curtains and carpet.
   Thanks today to Simon and Marie Young for letting me use their office’s server to send off emails today!

I saw a Peugeot 407 next to a 1980s BMW 5-series today and noted how much bigger, in every dimension, the 407 is. The 407 is regarded as small down the back—which makes you think about the size of, say, the Ford Mondeo CD345, which is about the same size as the outgoing Ford Falcon.
   Here’s a wild prediction: in years to come, the equivalents or descendants of the Ford Focus, Mondeo and Falcon will all be the same size and differ only in body styles and engine sizes.
   At Toyota, Corolla and Camry are approaching similar sizes, and Toyota Australia’s full-size model, the Aurion, is actually the same size as the Camry, right down to wheelbase. In fact, in some markets, the car that Australians call the Aurion is actually called the Camry.
   Roads can only be so wide unless even Toyota gets in to the Hummer H1 game and in future, we wind up with a mega-wide Previa.
   This may sound daft but if you consider that the Peugeot 307 and 407 and Ford Focus and Mondeo have similar engineering roots, then the likely integration in future will happen.
   As niche vehicles develop, the mainstream models will become fewer. For example, Nissan in Europe pretty much retails only specialty cars now. Aside from the supermini, the Micra, every Nissan sold in Europe is either an SUV, minivan or sports car. That’s a far cry from the manufacturer of the Sentra, Altima and Maxima in North America.
   What may likely happen is that mainstream nameplates will wind up on some niche vehicles, or niche vehicles may be marketed as the successor to everyday models—one of the few ways to get sufficient economies of scale.
   We’re unlikely to see a TGV approach to cars: the same width, but differing lengths based on your requirements—though models like the Renault Kangoo and Espace, with their lengthier counterparts, make me wonder.
   We’re also bound to see more manufacture in cheaper countries: Romania, Hungary and the Czech Republic for the European market; Russia, Uzbekistan and Ukraine for their regions; and, of course, Red China.
   Whatever the case, at this present rate, the motor industry will have a very different shape in the next decade, assuming we haven’t given up on the internal combustion engine or seen some catastrophe.

My comment on the Journeyman Blog today:

Mike, you are being generous. I’m no longer going to watch American serials that don’t have self-contained episodes as my “default” position, making exceptions for presently unforeseeable situations. I feel that strongly about Journeyman.
   Journeyman was an exception, but I have managed to stay away from all the other so-called hits with “story arcs” anyway (Lost, Heroes, The Nine, Traveler, Prison Break, 24, etc.).
   Like you, I was a Day Break fan and we managed to get, fortunately, all 13 episodes networked here (albeit at a really sucky time). I gave Journeyman a chance on the strength of a fabulous pilot but now, if I hear ‘Made in USA’ along with ‘story arc’, I just won’t bother.

   This cannot be good for the US TV industry, but if it has morons running the networks, then what can it expect? Journeyman was the last straw, especially as I tracked how the show unfolded and how inept NBC had been. This isn’t the first series that I have followed that was cancelled prematurely—but after so many of these, where American networks cannot understand that loyalty to the network brand also depends on overall product quality, I am just fed up.
   This is the Ford Taurus syndrome. The story is this: the Taurus was a huge hit for Ford. Instead of continual improvement, Ford opted to abandon the Taurus, letting it get trampled by the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord, when the SUV boom happened. Toyota and Honda, instead, kept improving their sedans and developed SUVs. By 2006, the Taurus was a joke, sold to rental car fleets. It was only for the 2007 model year that Ford transferred the Taurus name on to its Five Hundred. By that time, Ford lost a lot of customers to the Japanese and there are people who felt their loyalty had been thrown into their face.
   It also had the Ford Contour in the US, which the company refused to market properly, probably because it had been co-developed with its European branch. The claim was that Americans were not interested in the CD-sized market that the Contour occupied. Reality: Dearborn probably wanted to cover its own butt by saying, ‘We are not taking this European stuff because we have to sell domestically designed.’ It’s perhaps all political. Meanwhile, Americans were buying the same-sized car from BMW and Mercedes. Buyers just kept going foreign.
   Ford’s latest refusal to sell the German-designed C307 Focus, and instead facelift the older model for American buyers, is yet another example. Now the Focus is getting trampled by the Honda Civic, and the next Toyota Corolla will beat it even more. History keeps repeating there at Ford.
   In other words, Ford thinks Americans are dumb Yanks.
   NBC has combined these moves, but really, every network is guilty of this. While Journeyman was not a huge hit, NBC knows its poor scheduling and non-existent promotion are to blame. Instead of allowing an audience to build (the numbers were growing), it decided to interrupt Journeyman’s schedule just as the show found its legs. It had a quality product which it intended to kill. And in the meantime, viewers are feeling that the networks are not listening. They will happily go to cable, DVDs and other services. NBC’s remaining offerings—dumbed-down reality fare—will be like the 2005 Ford Taurus.
   In other words, the US networks think Americans are dumb Yanks. 
   No, foreigners do not think Americans are dumb because of George W. Bush. Foreigners think Americans are dumb because that is how American corporations treat American citizens, by making decisions that disrespect the American consumer’s intelligence. Foreigners then make an erroneous presumption that that is what consumers have asked for—when in fact most Americans are as upset about the strange corporate decisions that take place.
   As television globalizes—and it will—the US networks will be like Ford, where perceived quality and loyalty will no longer be there.
   Bad moves against quality products do affect the overall parent brand—something that even brand consultants need to remember.
   And, sadly, the parent brand’s image can often be tied to the national one.

Low res NZ PM with RM Gull E10

Some Americans already think that PM Helen Clark is Ms Photo Op, without the substance. That was the first thing that came to mind when this pic came through from the Ford Motor Company today.
   Considering that New Zealand had natural gas-powered cars when I was a youngster in 1980 (until the National government thought they might be bad for us in the mid-1990s and really pushed us toward good, healthy and cheap petrol) and Todd Park was experimenting with a methanol-powered Mitsubishi in 1983, you can see why I am not terribly impressed with news that we have this revolutionary, new biofuel pump serving E10.
   Little compares with our having a 20-plus-year lead on the rest of the world with LPG and CNG, something this country fails to acknowledge time and time again. Probably to cover up its own inadequacies and lack of vision.
   E10, phooey. Sure it’s a step in the right direction, but such a little step compared to the advances we were making against OPEC in the late 1970s. We should be crying about how our lead and knowledge have been flushed down the toilet, and how no one other than regular citizens gives a toss.