Ford Australia president Bill Osborne launches the new Falcon range at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre.
Could the FG Falcon be the saviour for Ford's large vehicle segment?
Ford has ignored the death rattles of Australia's declining family car market to unveil its new eighth-generation Falcon in a pitch for the nation's motoring dollar.
After hundreds of millions of dollars in development costs over several years, Ford Australia's new president Bill Osborne yesterday launched the FG Falcon sedan, ute and performance vehicle range, the first new Falcon for a decade.
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Mr Osborne would not reveal the development costs or sale price of the FG Falcons, saying the latter would be made public closer to when the mainstream sedan models go on sale in May.
But in a glittering unveiling at the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre, he said the FG Falcon would position itself at the forefront of the Australian market in areas of economy, performance and safety.
He said the FG Falcon would “blow away the cobwebs and reassert their place in Australian life — cars that say family, adventure and driveability, cars that joyfully proclaim, `Ford is for living, Falcon is for living'.”
Ford's bid for a bigger market share follows Mitsubishi's recent announcement that it will close its Adelaide plant next month, putting almost 1000 people out of work. And Ford last July announced plans to close its Geelong engine plant in 2010, with the loss of about 600 jobs.
But Mr Osborne, formerly president and CEO of Ford Canada, was yesterday putting a distinctly positive spin on his company's future in Australia and the FG Falcon's part in that future.
When asked what would bring Australian families back to larger cars, Mr Osborne gestured to the FG Falcons on display and said; “this vehicle”.
“I can tell you it is a fantastic vehicle . . . I think this car is one of the great sedans in the world, so it is perfectly capable of conquesting new customers,” he said.
“We consider it a success already from what we've accomplished from an engineering standpoint."
“We don't express our sales targets but I'm quite sure it will grow our sales in this segment.”
The Falcon market has shrunk rapidly in recent seasons and at 33,941 last year (down from 42,390 in 2006) it is less than half of the 71,000 which were sold in 1977, a year before the release of Holden's Commodore debutant, the VB.
“Hopefully, over time we'll change that,” the Ford boss said. “I have driven over 5000 vehicles in my career and this vehicle stands as the very best I have driven.”
Mr Osborne also said he looked forward to working with the Government on establishing an appropriate level of tariff protection from imported cars.
Under the current proposed tariff reduction schedule, the protection system would fall from 10 per cent to 5 per cent in 2010, although Industry Minister Kim Carr has said this would be subject to review.
“We want to work co-operatively with the Federal Government, we have certainly seen a great deal of co-operation in the past and we look forward to the review.
“It is very important for Australia to maintain a healthy domestic industry.”
