The Return of the Ford Taurus and It’s Twin Mercury Sable
posted in General |This past week Ford announced at the Chicago Auto Show that it is ditching the Ford Five Hundred name and going back to the Taurus as well as dropping the Mercury Montego to bring back the Sable. At the same time the Ford Freestyle crossover will now be called the Ford Taurus X.
The whole idea to drop the Taurus for the Five Hundred from the beginning was doomed. The Taurus is a name known all across the US to many generations. You have a product that is as well branded as lets say Coke and you drop it for a name that nobody recognizes. To this day I’d say maybe only 10-15% of consumers recognize the Five Hundred model, while 80% probably recognize the Taurus name.
Why spends hundreds of millions of dollars to brand a new name for virtually the same vehicle? In todays domestic auto market money can’t be thrown away like this, every dollar counts to keep Ford going. One piece of advice to Ford, drop the price of the new Taurus when you release it. Currently the Ford Five Hundred is in the range of $23-25k, while the Taurus should be debuted back into the market for under $20k.
It’ll be interesting to see if the Taurus can survive the comeback out of retirement.