1971 Ford F250 Reviews

Utes are Australia’s most popular type of vehicle, but which models offer the best resale value when the time comes to selling them? CarsGuide’s analytics team crunched the numbers so that we could bring you this exclusive report. 

Ford needs to find out how Chinese battery makers produce such outstanding batteries and then become better at it for the company’s survival, the company’s global boss said recently.

Who says a giant ship can’t be turned around quickly?

EV sales are "remarkably low", overall vehicle sales are dropping, and ute sales across our most popular brands have plummeted as Australia's new-car market gets off to a shaky start in January.

Utes are incredibly popular in Australia as evidenced by the fact that the Toyota HiLux and the Ford Ranger consistently top the sale charts here.

If you think Chinese car brands can't teach Toyota, Ford or GM anything about making vehicles better, think again!

They don’t have enough range. They take too long to charge. There isn’t enough charging infrastructure. I’d kept hearing the same complaints over and over again, from both friends, random strangers on the internet and even car industry executives, for years now. So I decided to find out for myself what the reality of living with an electric vehicle (EV) in 2025 is actually like. 

Retro car design is having a moment. Again.Massive around the turn of the millennium, few endure today from back then (namely BMW’s Mini and the Fiat 500), as most (including the Volkswagen New Beetle, Chrysler PT Cruiser and Toyota FJ Cruiser) enjoyed only fleeting success at best, before fading away.Today, we’re lucky enough to experience the overtly nostalgic Nissan Z and Ineos Grenadier, but there are others that we may never see.Here, then, is a list of desirable retro vehicles available overseas that could make it big in Australia if given a chance.Blocked from sale in Australia by Jeep owner Stellantis, the Thar is a descendent of the original Willys Jeep, dating back to 1947 when Mahindra started manufacturing it under licence.While the styling leans heavily into that ancestry, the current iteration, launched as a two-door hardtop in India in 2020, is a stylish body-on-frame recreational vehicle, offering four-cylinder turbo petrol or turbodiesel choices, modern comfort/convenience features and serious 4x4 off-roader capabilities. Just like its American doppelganger.Based on the Scorpio 4WD’s underpinnings, the four-door Roxx wagon offshoot, meanwhile, only debuted in July last year, and is considerably more practical, as well as civilised.Both versions would undercut their Wrangler OG cousin by tens of thousands of dollars, underscoring Stellantis’ desire to keep Mahindra’s ‘jeep’ out of Australia.We understand that an evolved version of today’s U725-series Bronco that broke loose in North America in 2021 is set for an Australian debut sometime in the future. The question is when.Ford’s global CEO, Jim Farley, recently confirmed right-hand-drive production for the T6 Ranger/Everest-based off-roader, which is a handsome and well-proportioned reimagining of the crisp 1966 original.Fun fact: the nameplate managed to evade Australia until the F-150-based Bronco III was actually assembled here in the 1980s, using Falcon engines.With China a nearby sourcing opportunity thanks to partner Jiangling Ford Auto, Ford locally would have a serious weapon against the coming, formidable BYD Denza B5 and much-rumoured Toyota LandCruiser FJ-style 4WD wagon.Bring the Bronco on.You might be surprised to learn that, like the earlier Bronco, the world’s first mass-produced hatchback, the original Renault 4 (1961-1994), was also built in Australia for a brief period.It was ultimately too kooky and utilitarian for our tastes back in the 1960s, but the eight-million-selling French front-drive family car germinated the seed for what we know as the modern small SUV today.The reinvented R4 for 2025 retains its beloved namesake’s upright stance, friendly face, chunky detailing, slanting rear doors and interior versatility, but with modern SUV proportions clothing an advanced all-electric architecture shared with the closely-related (but more diminutive) R5 E-Tech expected in Australia at some point.That the latter nabbed the most recent European Car of the Year gong bodes well for the 21 Century R4.Despite a long production run that saw it topple the Ford Mustang in the US at one point, the 2008-2023 Dodge Challenger never made it to Australia due to being left-hand-drive only.A pity, but some consolation could come in the unlikely event of specialist Japanese manufacturer Mitsuoka breaking completely from tradition by exporting one of its magnificent creations, the M55.No, not a motorway, but a current-gen Honda Civic with a Challenger nose and a Datsun C110/240K-esque posterior. Preposterous… or the automotive lovechild you never knew you pined for?Unconvinced? Then keep in mind that today’s Civic remains one of our favourite small cars on the planet, period, so at least the M55 would drive brilliantly. Especially as it uses a turbo/manual powertrain combination.The strange and wonderful wizards at Mitsuoka strike again with the Buddy, a current RAV4 topped and tailed by a ‘70s Chevrolet Blazer-inspired bodywork.Available in hybrid powertrains, the modifications meld uncannily well with the venerable Toyota SUV’s mid-section, especially when the retro wheel covers and period-evoking colour palette options are selected.Narrowly missing out being our bestselling vehicle outright in 2024, today’s fifth-gen RAV4 is popular enough to justify Mitsuoka importing the Buddy to Australia.

This is going to be the year of the plug-in hybrid ute.

What’s going on at Ford right now? Has the iconic motor company, the first in the world to bring cars to the masses, lost its way? Is it drowning in an incoming tide of Chinese electric vehicles it can’t compete against? Or does it know exactly what it’s doing and letting us live out our combustion engine dreams for now and giving us the car the electric brands can’t?In the past five years Ford has axed almost its entire line-up of vehicles in Australia. Those include the Puma and EcoSport small SUVs, the Escape mid-sized SUV, Focus and Fiesta hatches, Endura large SUV and Mondeo sedan. Today Ford’s range in Australia is tiny compared to most of its mainstream rivals such as Toyota and Kia. There’s the Ranger ute and its Everest SUV twin, the F-150 full-sized pick up truck, Mustang sportscar, electric Mustang Mach-E SUV and the Transit van and people movers.It was clear something was up at Ford about 10 years ago. In 2016 myself and several other motoring journalists were invited to Ford Australia’s head office in Broadmeadows Victoria for what was described as an informal chat. This meant leaving our phones in a plastic bucket at the door so we weren’t tempted to take photos of what was in the next room we were about to be led into. There was actually nothing in that next room apart some pastries, a coffee urn and waiting senior executives from the company, some of them from the United States. Actually there were more Ford people than journalists. They were very enthusiastic to tell us that there were lots of new Ford vehicles coming — especially SUVs."The days of having one SUV that is relevant to a whole bunch of people is over. It takes a proliferation of SUVs,” Ford Australia’s then Marketing Director Lew Echlin told me in that room.“The math is simple – the more SUVs that you have, the more customers that you have the opportunity to connect with… What we're attempting to get right now is shelf space. Edge we think will span several different consumer segments.”Edge was a large SUV about the same size as a Ford Territory and it was renamed the Endura for Australia. I went to the Endura’s launch in 2019, then the following year I covered it being axed from Australia. It was actually a really good SUV. But then so were many of the cars Ford axed — the Focus, the Fiesta, the Escape, the Mondeo, the Puma… but not the Ecosport.Ford would argue the reason was low sales and while that’s true it was because many of those models also being discontinued globally. Ford’s footprint was shrinking fast worldwide.The company’s global boss Jim Farley seemed to have a plan, actually he seemed to have many plans that he announced like New Year’s resolutions, only more frequently than just annually. “We aim to become the second biggest EV producer within the next couple of years,” Farley said on social media in 2021“... our ambition is for Ford to become the biggest EV maker in the world,” he continued.The tune had changed by 2024 when Farley told the Wall Street Journal that Chinese electric cars represented “an existential threat” and according to the same publication after he and Ford’s CFO John Lawler drove an electric vehicle in China, Lawler said “Jim this is nothing like before… these guys are ahead of us.” The latest Farley resolution came at the start of this year at the Detroit Motor show where he told industry website Automotive News that Ford was going to follow their own more exciting road.“Rule No.1 at Ford: no boring products,” Farley told Automotive News. “ We do not make shampoo.”It’s a bold statement, like they all were, but had Farley realised that Chinese EVs were too far ahead to catch right now and in the meantime the company would play to its strengths and make what it was good at like trucks and sportscars - the ones people actually bought?The Chinese aren’t making and selling V8 muscle cars or hardcore hi-performance off-road utes, and they weren't building anything that could threaten the F-Truck range.There would have been resistance from those high at Ford — the shelf-space executives — pointing out market share and losing a foothold. Ford lost A$2 billion in the first two months of 2024 trying to develop EVs through its electric Model E division without much success. Continuing down that road could just be an exercise in burning money.Ford’s presence in China is small. At the start of this year Farley announced the company earned A$958m in China 2024. This included exported vehicles.We’re also seeing Ford retract from the UK and European markets where strict emissions laws are putting pressure on the carmaker, which doesn’t have many vehicles that meet the tightening regulations.It appears then that Ford, while not completely walking away from EV development is putting most of its energy into models like the Mustang, Ranger and Everest, which last year accounted 90,552 sales between them in Australia. Just those three models puts Ford into the top 3 best selling brands in locally. There doesn’t seem to be a need for a Ford Focus or Mondeo, or even an electric car, not with numbers like this, not right now anyway.The same strategy appears to be used in the US where the line-up also includes the Bronco and Bronco Sport SUVs, along with the entire F-truck series, which has its high-performance models such as the F-150 Raptor R. The Mustang GTD is a racecar for-the-road version of the Mustang. The rest of the range is rounded out with the Explorer SUV and Edge with sporty ST variants. No sedans, not hatches and only three electric vehicles: the Mustang Mach-E, F-150 Lightning and E-Transit van.Farley’s Ford appears to be doubling down on no-boring combustion cars and it could well work in Australia’s favour where given our love of Rangers, Ranger Raptors and Mustangs might lead to more of the kind of cars we want.If we’re going down this road what else could Ford do? Another new Ford GT to take on Chevrolet’s Corvette? A modern Thunderbird? A Ranger Raptor with a V8? A hardcore off-road SUV Toyota LandCruiser or Land Rover Defender rival?Speaking of off-road that reminds me. Farley also made another bold claim this year at the Detroit motor show to Automotive News.“Ford wants to be the No. 1 undisputed off-road brand in the world,” he told Automotive News. “We want to be the Porsche of off-road.”