That and for whatever stupid reason, the exhaust pipes on the engine are on the front and the intake in the back. Same with the 2.4l engine.

1. High gas prices.
2. Plummeting used truck prices make new purchases less attractive.
3. Low trade in values for the trucks make equity trades near impossible.

The real problem is this problem could last indefinitely!

Fuel economy increases of the new F-150 will be negligible.
Same with power increase (10HP! Woo-hoo!)
The current truck is better-looking than the new one (Shhhhhh!)
In many ways, the 2009 F-150 is more warmed-over than class-leader!

On a new vehicle introduction, you want a 10% YTY sales increase, BARE MINIMUM! It will be very interesting to see what happens with F-series sales next year, as a used truck purchase will still probably be the smarter buy.

BTW, Even Accord can’t get to 10% with their new design (>7% YTY increase).

DrFill

How’s it going?

Japs ate it big-time in May, as they and everyone else has all year, in large truck/suv sales. So stop the circle jerk with your little jap pricks and don’t get all puffy.

Ford is supposedly up like 20-30-40% in cars and small SUV sales. Don’t know about GM or Chrysler, but I would imagine everyone saw gains in these segments last month.

Besides, Ford is gonna have all their Euro/Aus/Braz/etc. product here within the year and then we’ll see who’s getting bent over.

NoNamNewGuy, domestic auto-executive-assholes had the same copy of Economist and WSJ as guys working for Honda, Nissan, Toyota. What page domestic assholes were wiped with and which pages they actually read? They read wrong pages! Gooks (sorry politically correct crowd, those would be japs) beat them again. And the fact that they all are working on a new croo of small cars does not mean shit: GM & Ford have a track record of screwing up. I like Chrysler’s Caliber and hope they can monetize of those, but honestly, its the same guys who sold and “bought” company back.

And I’d hardly call this a “slip-up”. Losing a few thousand units and going from #1 to #2 is a “slip-up”. Going from the #1 position to the #5 position virtually OVERNIGHT is called “getting your ass handed to you”, and that’s coming from a big F-150 and Ford fan.
Not 2 years ago the F150 was consistently selling right around 80,000 units a month. Last year that had slid to closer to 60,000. And now we’re down to 40,000 and even Ford points to that going even lower.
Going from fighting to hit the 1,000,000-unit mark that they were fighting for in 2005 to fighting for 500,000-units just 3 years later is a really, really bad position to be in.

Undoubtedly, all the manufacturers are going to have to adjust to this changing market. I actually believe this is a good thing, consumers aren’t just going to go out and buy a truck for a daily driver, cheap fuel has been the problem for years anyway, promoting excessive consumerism of non-efficient vehicles. Soccer moms and commuters driving big SUV’s and trucks for what? I think this will also push all manufacturers to build much more efficient trucks for those who have-to-have a truck but demand better fuel economy.

By the middle of next year into the future there will be so many all new small vehicles hitting showfloors it will make your head spin! I believe you will also see demand for increasingly higher priced sub-compact/compact cars…$20k plus loaded up with technology and safety items.