FURY

PRAISE GOD

DETROIT, July 30 — The Ford Motor Company has decided not to build a second generation of the Excursion sport utility vehicle, which is seven feet tall and able to seat a softball team, people close to Ford's future product program said tonight.

The Excursion, cited by critics as the industry's most visible symbol of sport utility vehicle excess, is expected to be discontinued at the conclusion of the 2004 model year, meaning that it will have lasted only one generation. The Excursion was introduced in 1999 as a 2000 model year vehicle.

Sarah Tatchio, a spokeswoman for Ford, declined to confirm whether the company would drop the 19-foot vehicle, which gets 10 miles a gallon, is too long to fit in many garages and takes up two conventional city parking spaces.

"I am not able to talk about the future like that," Ms. Tatchio said. "The Excursion is part of our lineup for '03 and that's all I can say." Reports of the end of the Excursion appeared tonight on WDIV-TV in Detroit. Several industry analysts have also been projecting the Excursion's eventual demise.

Ford introduced the $45,000 Excursion in a bid to grab sales away from the industry's perennial leader in the extra-large sport utility vehicle market, the Chevrolet Suburban. At the time it was conceived, Detroit automakers were enjoying strong sales and healthy profits for sport utility vehicles.

"Detroit went completely c0ckeyed when it came to trucks," said Christopher Cedergren, managing director with Nextrend, a consulting firm based in Thousand Oaks, Calif. "They thought that if it was a truck, it would sell and make a load of money."

Ford's expectations were relatively modest, however. Given that Suburban sales topped 100,000 a year, it hoped it could sell at least 50,000 Excursions annually. It thought the vehicle, based on the Super Duty Ford F-series pickup, could round out a lineup of vehicles including the Ford Explorer and the Ford Expedition, which seemed petite by comparison.

But the Excursion stumbled from the start, in part because of a wave of negative publicity fanned by environmental groups like the Sierra Club. Even before the Excursion was officially introduced, the group ran a contest on its Web site to choose a nickname for the vehicle. The winner was the Ford Valdez, after the Exxon tanker that ran aground in Alaska.

Tonight, Carl Pope, the executive director of the Sierra Club, hailed the Excursion's pending demise. "I think this is a sign that the age of dinosaurs is about to come to an end," he said.

The Excursion's introduction came less than a year after William Clay Ford Jr., an avowed environmentalist and great-grandson of the company's founder, became chairman in 1998. Mr. Ford found himself in the awkward spot of having to justify the vehicle, which the Sierra Club contended would emit 130 tons of carbon dioxide over its lifetime, compared with 23 for a conventional car.

However, Mr. Ford, who became chief executive last year, defended the Excursion, contending it had received a "bum rap." He pointed to the $15,000 in potential profits that Ford hoped each vehicle would yield, even while acknowledging that Ford was too dependent on truck sales.

But instead of the hoped-for results, industry analysts said Ford most likely lost money on the Excursion. It needed to sell about 40,000 a year to break even. In the first half of this year, Ford sold 15,107 Excursions, down 16 percent from the pace in 2001, meaning it is likely to sell only about 30,000 this year.

Mr. Pope said, "William Clay Ford will go down as the man who was smart enough to kill the Excursion before it became an Edsel" referring to the embarrassingly unpopular Ford car of the late 1950's.

In fact, the Excursion's lack of market success is the key reason why Ford is discontinuing the Excursion, not criticism from environmentalists, said Michael Luckey, president of the Luckey Consulting Group in Pompton Plains, N.J.

While Ford recently ended a streak of losses by posting a modest second-quarter profit, it has warned investors to expect a loss for the third quarter and has embarked on a vigorous cost-cutting campaign. Ford recently announced it was dropping the Lincoln Blackwood luxury pickup truck, which it sold for less than nine months.

"They are looking at everything with a fine-tooth comb," Mr. Luckey said. "If Ford was earning $4 billion to $5 billion a year, it might survive to the next generation."

Mr. Luckey said the Excursion's eventual disappearance did not mean Americans had completely tired of sport utility vehicles, only that they had more choices. A number of vehicles have three rows of seats, one of Excursion's key selling points, but are easier to maneuver, he said.

"S.U.V.'s are going to be very popular, but as far as bigger is better, this could be a sign that people have said enough is enough," Mr. Luckey said.

PoopyRay

Wow, cool, you could have just posted the link.

civicdude

iTrader: (2)

Old News...Heard about that last month.

theguysmiley

1 down, 50,000,000 to go!

FURY

Good for you.

I saw this on another board. The link the guy posted required registration to the NYT site. So I copied and pasted it.

injencivic

iTrader: (7)

like i said earlier in the other post about this ford=[IMG]i/expressions/face-icon-small-puke.gif[/IMG]

LOWBOY

After reading comments like that, I really hope there are people on the Ford sites that are bashing Hondas.

silverdevil

iTrader: (5)

You know what FORD stands for? Yup, F#cking Over Rated Duds! As Cartman would say, Fords suck A$$!

LikeWEEEEEEEEEE

thankfully there will be less soccer moms driving around in tanks chatting on their cell phones

edit:
no noob. now have u ever owned a ford (u yourself, not your parents) and had it as a daily driver? im so tired of people trying to bash a good american car company.

FURY

every non-honda board bashes hondas.

FURY

Honestly, I think that anybody who drives a car longer than two basketball poles and gets 10 mpg "for safety" or "just because" and doesn't REALLY NEED/USE it should be kicked in the face and sat on by a fat guy.

trevor

...........
I'm gonna go ahead and have to agree w/ you on that one......
It's like driving around town w/ a bunch of out-of-towners in HUGE U-Hauls.......
Most people have only driven them once.......and they DO NOT know how to drive.........
I work w/ semi trucks all day long...(dispatcher).....yea, they are huge.....but all my drivers have class "A" liscences......They KNOW how to drive em'........
Ya stick some "soccer mom" in one.....then all goes hell.....she thinks she's king shiet cause her vehciles all huge so she drives like an idiot......
90 percent of people that drive oversized vehicles could really give a shiet about a pueny car that fits properly on the road.....
well enough rambling (sorry got bored).....
peace, trevor

[IMG]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/IMG]

cam

good...they were nothing but an ugly waste of space and gas...lots of gas

xxxhardcorexxx

dude...poeple who drive SUV's disgust me...first of all....MASSIVE waste of space, gas, perfectly good car parts, and assembly line space....second of all, the only people who drive SUV's are psycho menopausing soccer moms who can't drive for poo! stupid small children...

*~*Jay*~*

dragoon

iTrader: (2)

i agree. i HATE it when there's a giant excursion next to me, and there's a grand total of one person in the car. it's the most perfect symbol of gross excess we see so often in america today.