Why the new 2023 Ford Mustang is critical for the Blue Oval to avoid becoming the 'Ford Commercial Company' | Opinion

It’s been an exciting few months for the Ford Motor Company in Australia - the new Ranger has arrived in showrooms, the F-150 has been confirmed to arrive in 2023 and its first all-electric models, the E-Transit and E-Transit Custom, are locked in.

There’s a common theme through these announcements and it raises some questions about where the brand is headed in this country. 

Officially it’s known as the ‘Ford Motor Company’ but is it in danger of becoming the ‘Ford Commercial Company’ as it puts an increasing focus on Ranger and Transit?

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Of course, there’s nothing wrong with Ford enjoying success in the commercial market, and the Ranger is one of the best-selling vehicles in the country. But if the Blue Oval continues to focus its efforts on just its LCVs, it does a disservice to the rest of the brand and its other promising models.

We’ve written before that the brand is heavily reliant on the Ranger and Everest, but the Transit and Transit Customs are increasingly becoming a major player for the brand. 

Notably, when CarsGuide was talking about the brand’s need to look beyond the Ranger/Everest combination when interviewing Ford Australia president Andrew Birkic earlier this year, he quickly moved past the Escape and Puma SUVs, and instead talked up the current strength of the Transit.

“Transit is probably the one we have pretty strong orders from fleets that we'd just love to meet but we just can't get them right now,” Mr Birkic said.

As it stands, sales through to the end of September this year, commercial vehicles (Ranger, Transit and Transit Custom) account for 74.1 per cent of all Ford’s sales in Australia. Of that remaining 25.9 per cent, the Everest is more than half the brand’s remaining sales.

The Ranger is Ford's best selling vehicle.

In the first nine months of 2022, Ford has managed to sell just 1749 Pumas, 1571 Escapes and 1457 Mustangs. While the latter is in run-out, effectively, and the former two are supply constrained, it remains disappointing that these impressive SUVs are bit players in their respective segments.

While it’s hard to see a clear path forward for either the Puma or Escape to become segment leaders, Ford does have some promising news on the horizon. The seventh-generation Mustang will arrive before the end of 2023 and will almost-certainly become Australia’s best-selling sports car. 

Then there’s elephant in the room, because despite the Ranger falling under the ‘commercial vehicle’ category, in reality many are bought as ‘lifestyle vehicles’ - especially the Ranger Raptor. The same will be true of the F-150 from next year, with the big US pick-up likely to be bought for reasons beyond just its greater towing capacity.

The E-Transit is locked in for 2023.

Then there were the recent comments from Ford’s global president and CEO, Jim Farley, who told CarsGuide he has high hopes for Ford Australia with new, “opinionated” models.

“Ranger’s got a lot more diversity in it,” Mr Farley said. “If you look at F-150, we do a lot of different things with F-150, from work to Raptor to street trucks to a street racing performance truck, so I think Ranger has a lot of new derivatives.

“Everest is a very important thing for us because we’ve never really been able to compete successfully in the market with Toyota, and now we have a chance with the new Everest. Mustang is really important to Australia. We really want to be a brand in Australia with opinionated products.”

The F-150 is finally coming to Australia in 2023.

Precisely what those “opinionated” new models are remains unclear, but there has been a clear suggestion that if the local right-hand-drive conversion program for the F-150 is a success, the company would look at other models for the same process. The most likely candidate would be the Bronco off-roader, but it could also mean the F-150 Lightning electric pick-up and others.

The flipside of this argument is there’s plenty of scope for Ford to really establish itself as a commercial vehicle leader in this country, with Ranger, F-150, Transit Custom, E-Transit and potentially other models giving the brand a formidable line-up. 

Globally Ford has split itself into three separate but equally important, business units - Ford Blue, Ford Model E and Ford Pro. Blue is the internal combustion team, Model E looks after electric vehicles and Pro is the commercial side of the business.

Ford’s global chief financial officer, John Lawler, made it clear how important Ford Pro is to the entire business model. He was talking specifically in the near-future with electric commercial vehicles that are fully network connected, allowing the company to grow its business through subscription-style services to these customers.

Currently 74.1 per cent of all Ford Australia's sales are commercial vehicles.

“We are the number one commercial vehicle provider [in North America],” Mr Lawler said. “A lot of people look at commercial vehicles and they think it’s these delivery vans that are dropping off Amazon packages or UPS or DHL or things like that. That’s 10 per cent of the market, the rest of the market - and this is true for the rest of the world - is your small and mid-size businesses that are under-served.

“We believe we can provide software from a telematics [perspective], fleet management, when it comes to electric, charging, and business software, through partnerships with others, that will improve the productivity and the bottom line of those businesses.”

So, Ford Australia has an opportunity to be a leader in the commercial vehicle space as it rolls out the E-Transit and E-Transit Custom in the next two years, especially if it can leverage the Ford Pro connected services.

However, it cannot do this at the expense of the rest of the range. Ford has so many exciting - or opinionated - models that could help its sales in Australia, from the Bronco to F-150 Lightning and Mustang Mach-E, as well as continuing to try and grow the popularity of the Puma and Escape.