{"id":68541,"date":"2013-12-09T08:00:12","date_gmt":"2013-12-09T13:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thedetroitbureau.com\/?p=68541"},"modified":"2013-12-15T11:42:10","modified_gmt":"2013-12-15T16:42:10","slug":"mustang-v-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/2013\/12\/mustang-v-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Mustang v The World"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The new 2015 Ford Mustang will now target a global market with both left- and right-hand-drive models.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Automakers are always looking for maximum splash with the launch of a new vehicle, but Ford pulled out all stops during the 6-city debut of the new 2015 Mustang last week.\u00a0 But perhaps the most significant bit of news was buried in the press package for the 50th<\/sup> Anniversary\u00a0 model, which contained a section titled \u201cMustang Going Global,\u201d which built on a teaser news release from October that noted there are now \u201cnearly 100 (Mustang) clubs outside the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

To be clear, Mustangs have, in fact, been sold \u201caround the world\u201d since the pony car\u2019s launch in April 1964\u2014but not with the big push Dearborn is planning now.\u00a0 According to the October release, a mere 161,000 Mustangs have been sold outside North America in its 49 years of existence, an average of barely than 3,200 a year\u2014in other words, a pittance compared to the American market, where total sales over nearly half a century have amounted to around 9 million.<\/p>\n

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Stay in the Know!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But demand has been rising.\u00a0 Significantly, in 2012, more than 4,000 Mustangs were sold in 35 countries overseas, a substantial increase over the 49-year average.\u00a0 To put this in perspective, note that Mustang U.S. sales for ten months this year have averaged 6,600 a month.<\/p>\n

For the 2015 model, an increase can be anticipated for the simple reason the new Mustang will be factory-built with both conventional Left-Hand Drive (LHD) and Right-Hand Drive (RHD). \u00a0RHD is the motoring convention in Japan and mostly everywhere else the sun never set on the British Empire — with the notable exception of Canada.\u00a0 So this will help \u2018Stang sales in those markets where variable costs for conversions were, until now, prohibitive.<\/p>\n

These Siamese-twin Mustangs will be assembled on the same line at Ford\u2019s Flat Rock Assembly plant a few miles southwest of Detroit.\u00a0 This is a location where cast-iron engine blocks once were cast before a modern assembly plant was constructed on the same property. It operated as a joint venture with Mazda until 2012 when the Japanese maker ended U.S. production, leaving the facility all to Ford.<\/p>\n

(New Mustang designed to balance new and old. <\/em>Click Here<\/span><\/a> for a closer look.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Curiously, this is not the first time RHD Ford cars have been built in the U.S. on the same line as conventional North American LHD cars.\u00a0 When the 1996 Ford Taurus switched to a new body, there was belief the car could be sold globally, so both RHD and LHD models were assembled at Ford\u2019s Chicago Assembly Plant.\u00a0 (Both versions flopped in their marketplaces relative to the previous stellar U.S. performance of the original left-hand-drive Taurus.)<\/p>\n

Converting from LHD to RHD is not easy.\u00a0 Not only does the functional hardware like pedal and steering attachments have to be reworked (and retooled), the same is true of instrument panels and other controls, such as the switches located in the driver\u2019s door panel.<\/p>\n

Back in the 1930s, instrument panels were designed to be symmetrical, so mirror-image conversions were relatively easy.\u00a0 Not so for most modern American cars.\u00a0 Today\u2019s center stacks help, but still the instrumentation in front of the left-hHand driver has to be flipped.<\/p>\n

(2015 Mustang is swan song for retiring Ford design chief J Mays. <\/em>Click Here<\/span><\/a> for the story.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

At one time, Ford regularly built RHD versions of North American vehicles in its Canadian assembly plant since that output got favorable tax treatment within Britain\u2019s \u201csterling markets.\u201d\u00a0 That ended in the 1960s.\u00a0 Thus, for Ford to embark on RHD markets from a U.S. assembly plant is a big step, counting on the testosterone of Mustang males globally.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the list of 29 countries that the Ford release identified as “new<\/em> right-hand-drive markets” for “original factory-built right-hand-drive Mustangs”: Australia, Bangladesh, Britain, Brunei, Cyprus, Fiji Islands, Hong Kong\/Macau, Ireland, Kenya, Kiribati, Malawi, Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, Mozambique, Nepal, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Surinam, Tanzania, Timor-Leste (East Timor), Trinidad\/Tobago, Western Samoa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. \u00a0RHD also prevails in such places as Iceland, which indeed has one of the Mustang clubs.<\/p>\n

Still, the global Mustang, whether LHD or RHD, fits in with wunderkind CEO Alan Mulally\u2019s \u201cOne Ford\u201d concept in which all new vehicles must be global, an objective long sought at the company\u2019s Dearborn, Michigan, headquarters but rarely accomplished.<\/p>\n

(What about the Mustang convertible? <\/em>Click Here<\/span><\/a> to find out.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Recall that Ford\u2019s 1981 Escort was portrayed as a \u201cworld car\u201d?\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t so. \u00a0The Euro and American versions were similar in many dimensions but far from interchangeable \u2013 in fact, while the U.S. version continued to use the familiar English measurements, the overseas models were tooled for metric parts and components.\u00a0 That day is presumably long past, to the benefit of the company\u2019s stockholders.<\/p>\n

Is the investment in a rear-wheel-drive Mustang justified?\u00a0 Yes, especially if the platform with its IRS could be used, as some speculate, for a future rear-drive Lincoln.<\/p>\n

So how will Mustangs be sold overseas?\u00a0 According to a Ford export operations retiree with whom I happened to talk last week, at least in Continental Europe there was a Dutch company functioning as a distributor.\u00a0 This company, not Ford, established dealers on the Continent to sell exclusively North American Ford products.\u00a0 It remains to be seen if Ford will take this limited-volume approach or put Mustang on the floor of its own European showrooms \u2013 a potentially much higher-volume strategy.<\/p>\n

Remember the Lincoln Town Car seen in the Supreme Leader\u2019s funeral procession in the Democratic People\u2019s Republic of North Korea a couple of years ago?\u00a0 That car no doubt was bootlegged over to the closed Communist country by a Japanese dealer.\u00a0 The marketplace has a way of working when the demand is there.<\/p>\n

Will the all-new Mustang sell overseas? For sure.\u00a0 Interestingly, in many overseas markets, Ford will offer Mustangs equipped only<\/span> with the 2.3-liter 4-cylinder EcoBoost and the new 5.0-liter V8, not the carryover base V6, playing customers for both fuel economy with the 2.3 and high performance with the 5.0.<\/p>\n

Ford\u2019s pony car has great appeal because of its worldwide reputation\u2014Steve McQueen\u2019s Bullitt<\/em> certainly didn\u2019t hurt\u2014and the fact that for those buyers who can afford it, Mustang with all its variety of colors and options is bound to be unique wherever in the globe it is sold.<\/p>\n

I well recall that the first thing young Japanese male tourists in Hawaii appear to do is hike themselves over to a car rental agency to sign up for a Mustang convertible during their vacations. Whether they\u2019ll now buy one at home remains to be seen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While there’ve always been a few overseas buyers for Mustang, Ford plans to make a serious global push with the launch of the 2015 pony car. TheDetroitBureau.com’s auto veteran columnist Mike Davis looks at how Ford plans to take advantage of its worldwide Mustang fan base.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":131,"featured_media":68443,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"make":[],"post-state":[],"category_old":[151],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68541"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/131"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68541"},{"taxonomy":"make","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/make?post=68541"},{"taxonomy":"post-state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post-state?post=68541"},{"taxonomy":"category_old","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/category_old?post=68541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}