What a joke. Contrast this desperation with the confident, imposing design language of the Germans. Would Porsche or BMW ever ask anyone how to design cars?

This is the sort of garbage you get when you call the from Wisconsin into the boardroom to get their advice on design. What a joke.

Ahh, the classic question of design. Do you ask for what looks good or do you tell people what looks good?

I wanna see some interior shots though!

Wrong, the consumers want the European Ford Focus not a styling makeover of the old model.

“its highly unusual?” What horsexxxx, everyone clinics to some degree or another

It is putting lipstick on a pig….

Dear Ford,

I would like the following:

-Plastic body kit, which color gradually changes when exposed to the sun
-Big aluminum (colored) spoiler
-Multi-color neon under the car
-4 exhaust pipes, not necessarily pointing in the same direction. Noise is the key word here.
-2-tone purple/orange interior
-95% tint all around
-22″ rims, nothing smaller.

That’s about it.

Kind regards,

Rotman.

The german designs are a joke today. BMW backpedaled on their hunchback trunks.

Nothing admits inability better than asking other people how to design your own cars…. sure they may get some good points from the consumers… but arent these things that should already be in the cars??

because after all… the designers are consumers themselves, right?

This shows that american car buyers are not only blind but stupid
Bring the Euro Focus here Ford and stop making this **** It doesnt even have rear headrests

If Ford had asked me and listened, we would be seeing a lot better looking vehicle today.

Asking your customers what they want is a pretty smart thing. Marketing has been doing this forever- it’s called a focus group. They find their segment and then survey them for information. Now the European Focus is so much better in my opinion, but until Ford decides the design battle between “Kinetic” and “Red, White, and Bold”, we won’t get it. Short shifter- they are consumers, but the Focus is a compact car which is a certain segment (maybe eco-friendly people, or young people)- whatever they break it down into. The guy who goes out and buys that Boss Mustang isn’t going to give a crap about a Focus because that person is into performance, etc. So they need to pick their groups carefully.

Ford is just covering up for all the crap they are getting about this car. “It wasn’t our choice, but the people spoke”!

Rotman: Very scary comments…hard to tell if you are pushing some sarcasm, or are waiting for puberty to set in.

The best thing that happened to Ford is that their former chief of design is screwing up BMW styling. Z4 is his success story. Imagine him at Ford: current Mustang will be color purple looking like male genitalia on wheels.

hoosiehero, I respect what your saying… but my opinion is this… it shuoldn’t matter if your designing a 10 second car or a family eco car you should know what the customers want. I agree that talking to the people helps but at the end of the day the designers are the car guys… they are paid for comming up with these ideas… they should know that putting mesh on the front grill of a car isn’t going to make it an instant hit… its the other details that have been developed over the years that truly sell a car

You should know what the customers want…without asking them. LOL.. most customers don’t know what they want (and can afford..hence all the bankruptcies), UNTIL they see it or are pushed into it (Ads) or peer-pressured/lusted after it.

You never took a college-level marketing course, I take it?

Hahaha. They should have the guys at Mazda design their cars for them, they actually know how to make an attractive, 21st century small car , a la Mazda 3.

This is a great example of how NOT to use focus groups.

Properly researching your target audience is a must in today’s competitive climate… you can’t leave it to guesswork. But design is also a high priority and leaving the details down to consumer opinion shows incredible weakness on the part of Ford’s marketing and design. They clearly have no confidence in their own abilities.

As the old adage goes, “A camel is a horse designed by committee.”

A styling “refresh” of an 8+ year old car is not the way to make it competitive. Every other vehicle in the segment the Focus “competes” in has already been revised, some more than once. Even the European Focus is two generations past what we have in North America.

hey all their changes sound good to me

purdue, being an IU grad, and a MBA guy, marketing was in the curriculum. Like I said, it’s called segmentation, and if you live in Indiana, take a look at Hendricks Regional Hospital. By just “asking” their customers what they want, they’ve made millions and beat all of their projections… so ya, I think it does help to some degree.

The Big 10 sucks this year, but the braindead lemmings and the biased coaches are not giving MSU the respect it deserves

They must not have asked too many people what they thought, because it still looks ugly as hell.

Consumers always will give an opinion based on what they know. So why is ford asking consumers to do the design for future ford products?! are they that desperate? what is the concept of future car design @ Ford i wonder…other car companies, such as BMW embraces risk. it knows that risk comes with territory. it’s part of doing business.

They did NOT talk to the consumers!

Consumers are great at reacting to what they already have. They are terrible at designing new things, or telling you what they are liable to want three years from now. Leadership design creates the market. Wuss design asks permission.

The best focus group story I know comes from Ford, ironically. In the mid-1980s they put prototype Taurus sedans out to clinic. At the time the Taurus was a design revolution — jellybean smooth amid a bunch of knife-edged competitors — and the car got slammed. Some historically high number, like 65%, said they would NEVER consider the Taurus. It is to Ford’s credit that they BUILT THE CAR AS IS anyway and it was a massive hit. The company knew when to ignore focus input.

That’s the kind of “bold move” the company ought to be making today, but instead, we get dead-on-arrival efforts like the ‘08 Focus… which will be totally ignored in the market.

just take a look at the Euro focus and compare it to this

This is complete BS.. I’m so glad Ford asked consumers the important questions, like what texture would you like behind the ugly half-Fusion grille, or what shape foglights should we stick in the square holes? How about asking questions like should we keep the functional hatchback and wagon shapes, or instead create a new 2-door coupe that manages to be both ugly and impractical? Or how about asking the obvious question, would you spend the extra money to purchase the vastly superior European model?

They should have asked consumers with taste.

“It’s not our fault it’s so ugly! It’s YOURS!!”

Wire mesh….oooohhh…..aaahhhhhh…

Bunch of Freaks.

Dump the soap-bar pattern every car from Ford has to go through……the Taurus died a long time ago.

Let the designers rule, not commitees and engineers.

A kid can draw cooler cars than Ford produces, minus the Mustang.

The Japanese motorcycle companies did the same thing back in the 70’s before they came out with the cruiser style bikes… Some peeps need to stop speaking on behalf of the people. Quotes like “consumers want the European Ford Focus” So this car wont move 1 unit? They will sell so deal with it. Ford can’t afford to screw up with reliability issues and the car doesn’t look bad… Looks way better then the Civic, Carolla, Jetta, etc… True the Euro Focus is cool but there is a reason it’s not brought here. When you factor in safety specs maybe that car is impossible to bring up to American safety standards without major re-engineering.

i guess you get what you ask AND design for lol. i sure as hell won’t be buying. i got a german focus ST. its red and very, very fast on the autobahn. damn, i love that car. god bless the good ol’ army for still having bases in germany and some of europe, thats why i joined, that and to fight for my country.

Shouldn’t all this research have taken place before the car is revealed to the public? I’m not saying that the results are good or bad. By making changes so often in public, Ford looks very indecisive and unsure of interpreting what the buying public needs, wants, or will ultimately purchase. I would love to see this corporation really find its way in the U.S. market and I’m hoping Mr. Mullaly can lead Ford’s way back to relevance and higher market share.

Another disturbing item is the discontinuation of the hatchback model. If what I have read in another article is true, hatchback sales are beginning to build up momentum. While this is happening, Ford drops a hatchback configuration from a model that has already established this configuration as an option in the market place. Why not continue to offer this configuration with the restyle?

All I can say about the restyle is that I hope it’s a short lived stop gap measure until Ford can offer the next generation European version on our shores. When you look at the 2008 U.S. version compared to the European version (especially the recently introduced version with the “kinetic design” update), it seems that the U.S. market is on the losing end of the deal. Ford’s European lineup reveals that Ford has the talent to offer competitive products in the marketplace. Let’s hope this talent makes its way over here before Ford gives up too much more market share to the competition.

I just wonder if Ford really cannot afford a smart car designer.

How do you get picked for one of these focus groups? I know I can give them better ideas than this. Round fog lights over square? How freaking stupid!

Your cars suck, ours are cool. I love it, I love it, I love it.

US Cars suck. Period

T least theyre not as bad as british cars yuck

The British have more lucrative things to do with their time than build cars.

NICE CAR