Ford Australia Reveals 23% Profit Dip

[XRBloke]

This year they will be lucky if they even get over the line.

Rumour has it they could infact be looking at a Loss for 2006.

The BA / BF cycle is over, things are only going to go backwards from here on.

[XRBloke]

  tmac450 said:

Maybe, if Ford did the right thing by their customers (especially repeat business) and offered decent trade-ins, boosting their used values, they would get more sales.

I can never understand why, through sheer dealership greed, they chop the arse out of their own resale values by offering such poor trade-in prices.  Fuel prices is only one issue, they are compounded by  house resale.

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What a load of crap.

Neither Ford themselves or the dealers can drive prices. Its all about the market, trade ins are trade ins, dealers have some cars on the lot for 3 - 6 months, they have to pay interest to have those cars, detail them, get them roadworthy they drop their pants to sell them. I think the biggest problem with Australians is the fact that a large number of us are changing cars over way too early and that if people actually went back to keeping cars for 5 years the market would not be so flooded.

You also have lease / fleet companies to blame, the bastards buy the cars 20 - 30 % cheaper then the rest of us then use them as a tax write off, sell em in 18 months - 2 years and dont lose out.

[chooch]

  XRBloke said:

  tmac450 said:

Maybe, if Ford did the right thing by their customers (especially repeat business) and offered decent trade-ins, boosting their used values, they would get more sales.

I can never understand why, through sheer dealership greed, they chop the arse out of their own resale values by offering such poor trade-in prices.  Fuel prices is only one issue, they are compounded by  house resale.

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What a load of crap.

Neither Ford themselves or the dealers can drive prices. Its all about the market, trade ins are trade ins, dealers have some cars on the lot for 3 - 6 months, they have to pay interest to have those cars, detail them, get them roadworthy they drop their pants to sell them. I think the biggest problem with Australians is the fact that a large number of us are changing cars over way too early and that if people actually went back to keeping cars for 5 years the market would not be so flooded.

You also have lease / fleet companies to blame, the bastards buy the cars 20 - 30 % cheaper then the rest of us then use them as a tax write off, sell em in 18 months - 2 years and dont lose out.

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you the hit the nail on the head with that comment XRbloke. good work

[XRBloke]

Yeh well if ford wanted to do anything about resale they would up Fleet pricing, but then they could possibly lose out on 70% of their business.

The only reason why Fords and Holdens dont hold value is because fleet companies buy them, not because either of the companies are Nasty Assholes who dont like giving decent trade ins. Look at FPVs, they still hold relatively well in the market when it comes to trade in time. The reason is not many fleet companies buy them. Look at the XR6 Turbo, every second wa*ker working for Telstra at a desk position has one, they buy them for 6 - 7 less grand then the rest of us, keep them for 2 years and lose basically nothing, they they go again with a brand new one and do the same thing.

As I said before we would all be better off if we kept our cars for 5 years, rather then 18 months to 2 years, its a shame fleet companies dont do the same but they make too much money out of how they roll em over.

[tmac450]

OK, I admit that fleet sales has alot to do with it, but Toyota Camrys still seem to hold their value better than the Fords and Holdens.

Don't be fooled into thinking is a big discount. Ford gives the dealers $500 for fleet discounts, the rest comes from the dealer. The main benefit for fleet is in GST rebates and tax right offs.

The 2nd hand issue is a little more complicated than fleet. Yards often try to stick large mark-ups on trade ins, that's why they sit there for so long. As far as trade-ins affecting resale, what do you think fleet buyers do? They trade them in, I haven't seen too many flogging them in the Trading Post.

Car values are derived from an average of all cars sold and reported through the RTA in rego transfers. On a car that retails for $30k, a yard will generally offer $20k or less. This drives the average sale price down. Compounding the situation is low trade in offers drive customers to sell privatly for somwhere in between the retail and trade-in price, once again driving the average down. In the past dealers would offer realistic trade ins ($2-4k under their selling price), now many yards rely on used cars for their profits.

The biggest factor, however, is the fact that Ford and Expensive Daewoo are constantly changing their models in an attempt to out do each other. This makes older models obsolete faster and less desireable, therefore reducing their resale values.