Ford CEO Jim Farley may have been in front of the cameras at the Formula 1 season-opening Australian Grand Prix across the weekend, but he saw more than Melbourne while on his Down Under trip.
Farley used the trek to Australia to assess the market, telling journalists he not only got to sample Ford’s local products, but also some of its biggest competitors, such as the BYD Shark 6 and GWM Cannon Alpha PHEV.
His visit comes after the Ranger became Australia’s best-selling vehicle for the third year in a row in 2025 – a feat not achieved since the Falcon in the late 1980s – while Ford was the second-most popular brand overall, only behind the all-conquering Toyota.
But there’s a rising threat to its business, mainly from a large number of more affordable rivals from nations such as China, as well as Australia’s New Vehicle Efficiency Standard (NVES), which came into effect last year as a way to encourage carmakers to introduce lower-emitting cars to the market.
In a post on social media, Farley detailed the purpose behind his extended trip to Australia, detailing it was as much of a fact-finding mission as it was a summer holiday.
“Australia is such a unique car market,” Farley said.
View this post on Instagram
“The Chinese are big here, the Asian companies like Toyota are big, and we’re the number one best-seller (with the Ranger). So I’m here to decide with my engineering team, what should the future of our product lineup be in Australia?
“And it’s really existential for the company, because as Australia goes, so does South America, the Middle East, Africa, and most of the rest of the world.
“So this really is an important trip, maybe perhaps among the most important for me as a CEO. We should leave here with a really concrete, specific idea of what our product plan should be for the next 10 years – for the globe, not just Australia.”
The engineering team Farley speaks of is an approximately 1400-strong workforce, mainly based around Ford’s local headquarters in Melbourne. Despite being such a relatively small outfit, Ford Australia engineers led the development and design of the T6 platform underpinning the Ranger and Everest.
On top of this, they were at the forefront of developing the new Ranger Super Duty, the first Ford product outside of North America to adopt the Super Duty nameplate, as a rival to take on the likes of the Toyota LandCruiser 70 Series.
Overseas, the Ford Bronco sold in North America is also based on the T6 architecture, though its left-hand drive-only layout means its out of reach for Australia, despite its local underpinnings.
Despite the local team taking on such important roles, the headcount has been reduced in recent years following the development and launch of new products, and the relatively slim lineup Ford Australia offers.
The Ranger alone led Ford to increase its overall sales and market share across the past decade, with the brand rising from 70,454 deliveries and a 6.1 per cent share in 2015, to 94,399 deliveries and a 7.6 per cent share in 2025. In 2024 it also cracked 100,000 deliveries for the first time since the Global Financial Crisis.
However, factors such as NVES – which sees carmakers penalised $100 for every gram of CO2 per kilometre their vehicles emit above a certain limit – threaten to not only increase prices of the Ranger and Everest, but also place some of those engineering jobs in jeopardy.
Farley is yet to announce how the Ford Australia lineup will be shaken up, but moves in recent years – such as the cancellation of the Puma Gen-E before its arrival, and the axing of the Escape – suggest it will continue to lean into the commercial vehicle space.
Discussion about this post