Ford has been scaling back on sedans globally, with a south-east Asian market Taurus/Mondeo remaining as one of its few four-door passenger cars available anywhere.
In Australia, the Falcon died in 2016, while in Ford’s home of the US, the Taurus, Fusion and Focus met their demise in 2018, all due to reduced demand and a higher uptake of SUVs and pickups.
However, sedans can make sense as EVs, providing a solid aerodynamic base to unlock better range and even more space than a similarly sized SUV.
Speaking to Forrest’s Auto Reviews, Ford CEO Jim Farley said his brand’s upcoming EV platform – set to debut in a Ranger-sized pickup – would be perfect to underpin a sedan, and it wouldn’t have to be a boring commuter.
“I fell in love with sedans when I was a young guy as a product planner at Toyota. The issue is we’re committed to making all of our vehicles in the US, and making a sedan in the US, the only platforms we have are from Europe,” Farley said.
“People in Europe pay $3000, $4000, $5000 more than the US for a sedan, and we had all the dynamics, sound deadening – all the things we needed to compete in Europe, when we brought to the US, [it was] way too expensive. We lost so much money.
“But now, since we have this challenger project, the skunk works project for this affordable EV, the sedan silhouette turns out to be very clean aerodynamically.
“And so we’re thinking, ‘Should Ford do a rear-wheel drive, high-performance, affordable sedan with a really cool closure system in the back so you can carry a lot of stuff, as an all-electric [vehicle]?’. That’s the way I’m thinking about the sedan.”
The new EV platform being developed by Ford’s California skunkworks team is set to be built in the US, and start under an electric pickup that will be “as fast as a Mustang EcoBoost” and have “more passenger space than the latest Toyota RAV4” for a starting price of “about US$30,000 (A$45,570)” when it arrives in 2027.
Dubbed ‘The Universal Vehicle’, it’ll eventually morph into other models, like the sedan Farley mentioned.
Ford is also understood to be planning to launch a sedan version of the Mustang coupe, which would bring it back into the petrol-powered passenger car segment.
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