UPDATE: Ford Preparing Facelift For Five Hundred Sedan
Monday September 20, 6:24 PM EDT
By Sharon Silke Carty
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
DETROIT (Dow Jones)--Even though they haven't even hit the market yet, the Ford Five Hundred sedan and Freestyle crossover vehicle will be getting facelifts soon thanks to widespread criticism that the cars are boring.
J Mays, vice president of design at Ford Motor Co. (F), said Monday the company has been working on refreshing the new cars for six or seven months.
"Some have said they were a little too conservative," Mays said. The newer versions will get a few styling changes, including a more aggressive shiny 3-bar grill.
Ford had dubbed 2004 "The Year of the Car" - promising that new products like the Five Hundred would help lift market share. But, unlike the popular Chrysler 300 sedan, the Five Hundred hasn't set the world on fire. Focus groups and magazine critics say that its dull exterior make it a ho-hum offering. And its 203-horsepower 3-liter V6 engine - the only engine offered on the car - is puny compared to Nissan Altima's 3.5-liter V6, which pumps out 250 horsepower.
Boring styling has never been a death knell in the sedan market. Take, for example, the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord, which have sold 272,800 and 242,000 sedans respectively year to date. But Ford doesn't have the same quality reputation as Toyota Motor Corp. (TMC) and Honda Motor Co. (HMC), said Art Spinella, president of CNW Marketing Research, so buyers are likely to go elsewhere.
"If you have a reputation like Toyota and Honda do for building cars that are bulletproof, you can sell boring cars," Spinella said.
Spinella's firm has conducted focus groups with traditional Ford buyers, and they have come away lukewarm on the car. People said the car was "hardly distinguishable from anything else," Spinella said. Comparatively, other focus groups were excited about the Chrysler 300, which has been a hit since its launch earlier this year.
Still, some dealers say customers are are expressing a lot of interest in the car. Jerry Reynolds, owner of Presige Ford in the Dallas area, said he's received as many calls asking about the upcoming Five Hundred as he has for the newly remodeled Ford Mustang, both due out in October.
The new sedan will give Reynolds something to sell against the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord. Ford's current sedan, the Taurus, has become largely a fleet vehicle and doesn't generate much consumer interest.
"I don't have anything that competes," Reynolds said. "This car competes."
Mike Wall, an industry analyst with CSM Worldwide, said the fact that Ford is working on redesigning the car already "is an indication that all is not right in the world." The sedan is too conservative, he said, and lacks a powerful enough engine to compete with the Asian automakers.
Base price for the Five Hundred is $22,795, which is lower than most of its competition. But Spinella said focus group buyers thought that was about the right price - which could be bad news for the sedan. Focus group members thought the Chrysler 300 and Toyota Avalon sedans should be priced a few thousand higher than they actually are.
"The Five Hundred is right about where people think it should be - and without having anything else to distingiush it from the competition, that's not good enough," Spinella siad. "If you're not going to do it with styling, you should do it with price."