Farewell to the Fusion. Ta-ta to the Taurus. Say so long to the Focus and Fiesta. Yesterday Ford made the dramatic announcement that it would kill off all of its car models except the Mustang in the coming years and would get 90 percent of its sales from "trucks, utilities, and commercial vehicles" by 2020.
This sounds like shortsighted foolishness. Think back to the first time Americans fell head-over-heels for bigger vehicles and ditched their sedans for SUVs—but then changed their minds when gas prices shot up. Almost exactly 10 years ago, in May of 2008, the seemingly unstoppable F-150 was outsold by not one but four fuel-efficient sedans: the Honda Civic and Accord, and Toyota Corolla and Camry.
With high gas prices looking like they're coming back, this seems like an inauspicious time for Ford to announce it’s giving up on cars. Haven’t they learned anything?
Yes, they have. This time is different, and it's different because the automakers learned how to build crossovers.
Let's return to 2008 for a moment. The vehicles of SUV boom 1.0 were bruisers. A decade ago, the Ford Explorer was a body-on-frame truck that offered V8 power. In its thriftiest guise, the Ford SUV managed only 16 mpg EPA combined.
Today’s Explorer is a crossover—a taller body riding on a car platform. Really, it's a Taurus in disguise. A front-wheel-drive EcoBoost model gets 22 mpg combined, while the most efficient Taurus has a V6 that gets 21 mpg. The situation is similar when you look at the Fusion and its crossover equivalent, the Ford Edge. A 2.0-liter Fusion gets 25 mpg combined. The 2.0-liter Edge gets 24 mpg.
Today, the engine matters more than the body style. Which is to say, discontinuing the Taurus and Fusion doesn't do much to change overall fuel economy even if every car buyer ran out and got an Explorer or an Edge.
It's not like Ford is going to kill the 1.0-liter Fiesta and replace it with colossal V10 Excursions because Detroit thinks the petroleum party’s never gonna end. The company is simply packaging its cars as tall wagons, because that’s what people want right now.
If fashions change and somehow sedans become all the rage? No problem. It’ll be relatively easy to repurpose a two-row crossover into a sedan, reversing the alchemy that gave us all these crossovers in the first place. The next Explorer just might be rear-wheel-drive. That would make for a hell of a sedan.
Ezra Dyer is a Car and Driver senior editor and columnist. He's now based in North Carolina but still remembers how to turn right. He owns a 2009 GEM e4 and once drove 206 mph. Those facts are mutually exclusive.
