What’s going on at Ford?

The tragedy

One of my neighbours, a man of honour who has turned grey, drives a Ford Fiesta that is also getting on in years. He now wants to afford a new car, preferably a Ford, because he has had many Fords, and ideally a Fiesta, with which he has had good experiences, and which is the right size for him. But there are no more Fiestas at Ford. And no Focus either, which might have been an option. He doesn’t want the Puma, currently the cheapest Ford model, purely visually it’s not his thing (no praise followed). My neighbour tells me that his trusted dealer then recommended an Explorer, purely electric. But he didn’t want that, electricity was definitely worth considering, but the Explorer was much too big. And above all: much too expensive. Despite a massive discount.

So a loyal customer, who is really not a car freak and not even particularly hi-tech savvy, a customer who has so far mainly driven his small car for shopping, sometimes to visit relatives or for hiking, and who has always been on time for servicing, is now supposed to buy a Ford that costs at least twice as much as his old new car? And all because his favourite brand no longer has anything to offer him in his usual price range? Well, my neighbour is not alone – last year, the first without a Fiesta, Ford’s sales in Europe fell by 17 per cent. In Switzerland, the drop was as much as 27.1 per cent; in the first two months of 2025, it is now down by another 22.2 per cent.

The sales strategy for the small village in the Emmental is not written in Switzerland or at the European headquarters in Cologne, but in far-off Dearborn. There, one Mustang after another is launched, along with the GTD and other wild things. A four-door version is even in the planning stage, and the huge losses of the all-electric F-150 are shrugged off – after all, Europe is still little more than a footnote there. With 426,307 units, Ford does not even achieve 10 percent of its sales volume in the EU, EFTA and UK; worldwide, it was just under 4.5 million units in 2024 (although in good years it has been over 6.5 million). So it’s somehow clear that Dearborn doesn’t want to be bothered with crude, constantly changing EU rules, Euro-7 or whatever, so the old sheep is led to the scaffold. Just for your information: Ford of Britain was founded in 1909, Ford Germany in 1925 (so 100 years ago…), Ford of Europe in 1967 to concentrate.

So someone in Dearborn read that there would only be electricity in Europe at some point soon. In the knowledge of their own weakness – the E-Mustang is only selling moderately well in Europe – they quickly entered into an unholy alliance with Volkswagen. Well, they quickly realised that a new dress for the ID.3 wasn’t enough, so there were a few delays with the new, all-electric Explorer (in Switzerland: from 41,100 francs, in Germany: from 42,500 euros), software and all that, so they quickly threw the Capri in the meantime (in Switzerland: from 43,600 francs, in Germany: from 44,950 euros). But none of this was what the still very numerous Ford fan community had in mind. Capri as a jacked-up SUV coupé – please not. And what about a Fiesta? Wouldn’t it be easy to imagine as a compact, easy-to-use, sensible and therefore affordable electric car? And an electric Focus, which for decades was the most agile car in the lower mid-size class. That would be something that is still missing among electric cars, a gap in the market that is not that small. Just something affordable that the typical Ford customer, who doesn’t have seven Bugattis in his stable, might want to buy. Dearborn passes by where the European sales figures are now.

Although Ford will also be hit hard by the new customs idiocies of the orange wrecking ball. The jostling within the ex-NAFTA, where steel from Canada is first preformed into a piston in the USA, then fine-tuned in Mexico, sent back to the USA and implemented in an engine that is then installed in a Ford in Canada, which is finally to be sold in the USA – that will be expensive. It will either cost margins or sales. Even if Ford seems to be better positioned than GM, for example, with its US factories, it will take time to reorganise everything – and that costs time and therefore money. So Ford is also facing hard times at home, where there are still a few things to be done.

And what about Ford’s future plans for Europe? For the time being, the commercial vehicles business is keeping the company more or less afloat. But according to well-informed internal circles, Cologne does not have a good plan for passenger cars either. They should sell the Explorer and Capri, the given sales targets are apparently higher than those of an ID.3/4. And if they don’t, then they don’t. Europe has definitely become a sideshow, and not just for Ford.

A small addendum: on 10 March 2025, the parent company in Dearborn decided to inject up to 4.4 billion euros into the European subsidiary. This amount is intended to serve as debt relief, but at the same time means that the Americans are relinquishing patronage. Which, according to experts, in turn means that Dearborn would no longer have to take responsibility in the event of a possible insolvency of the Cologne-based company; not a good sign. Dearborn also wants to provide ‘several hundred million’ to boost business in Europe over the next four years. These are a few drops on a very hot stone, but nothing more.