Farley: Ford to Stop Traditional Advertising For Mach-E & Lightning EV

[JimmyL]

The way I see it . . dealerships of the future will be for maintenance and repairs not sales. . . Possibly a pickup destination for vehicle bought direct from the manufacturer. The greed these bastards have shown over the past 2 yrs with ADM and sneaky add-on says the end is near. Good.

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[AllenXS]

The way I see it . . dealerships of the future will be for maintenance and repairs not sales. . . Possibly a pickup destination for vehicle bought direct from the manufacturer. The greed these bastards have shown over the past 2 yrs with ADM and sneaky add-on says the end is near. Good.

I see them still having sales people / person.
The dealership I used - they are moving to "supporting" online/inhouse purchasing, liaising with Ford and then I would imagine the service bays have more EV bays than grease pits. I can imagine the sales manager role and sales team moving to 1/2 sales people working for a service centre vs a service centre hidden behind a large sales centre.
And hopefully larger coffee spots / internet bays so I can work while waiting for my EV to be diagnosed / quick tune up (with nicer coffee).

 

[Guppydriver]

I completely understand the opinion of this being a net positive.

But to play devils advocate for a moment….

It wasn’t long ago that people were haggling 10-20% off MSRP on their deals. I remember when I was looking at a Ram a few years ago, there were folks stacking incentives to get 20 thousand dollars off new Ram’s.

If we eventually return to normal stock, some of us may miss the art of the deal if you were particularly well suited for it.

It’s really easy to not like dealers right now with their unscrupulous ADM’s , but it certainly cuts both ways.

 

[IMDIDOC]

I can't imagine the dealers being totally cut out of making money on sales. I'm headed to my dealer tomorrow. I'll see what I can learn.

 

[Illinibird]

Wait?!? They've been advertising the Mach E? I have never seen any advertisements.

Chevy Chase in Electri-Vacation: Ford Mustang Mach E Electri-Vacation with Chevy Chase Commercial was a take on National Lampoons Christmas Vacation (the Griswold's) and had Chevy Chase in both

 

[machdady]

Chevy Chase in Electri-Vacation: Ford Mustang Mach E Electri-Vacation with Chevy Chase Commercial was a take on National Lampoons Christmas Vacation (the Griswold's) and had Chevy Chase in both

This is my favorite. And the movie.

The OTA commercial (vs pit crew) is funny. As if it worked that smoothly. Perhaps soon

 

[JohnFoxeSheets]

...it stopped promoting its electric Mustang Mach-E because “it’s sold out for two years.”

This jumped off the page for me. While it could be interpreted that the 2021 and 2022 model years sold out, it could also be interpreted as the 2022 model year will take two years to fulfill...

 

[Logal727]

I completely understand the opinion of this being a net positive.

But to play devils advocate for a moment….

It wasn’t long ago that people were haggling 10-20% off MSRP on their deals. I remember when I was looking at a Ram a few years ago, there were folks stacking incentives to get 20 thousand dollars off new Ram’s.

If we eventually return to normal stock, some of us may miss the art of the deal if you were particularly well suited for it.

It’s really easy to not like dealers right now with their unscrupulous ADM’s , but it certainly cuts both ways.

Eh, they’ll just do more financing specials, they still gotta find a way to move inventory in the future.

 

[agdad]

welcome to the world of Elon, Ford

 

[leeman]

FORD is KILLING OFF THERE EMployees

 

[RickMachE]

This is absolutely false news. As recently as this week I saw an ad that featured both the Mach-E and the Lightning. While they may not be running model-specific ads, they are running ads including those models.

And Ford is running ads showing the Lightning powering a house.

Hyperbole.

 

[yngwenli]

I completely understand the opinion of this being a net positive.

But to play devils advocate for a moment….

It wasn’t long ago that people were haggling 10-20% off MSRP on their deals. I remember when I was looking at a Ram a few years ago, there were folks stacking incentives to get 20 thousand dollars off new Ram’s.

If we eventually return to normal stock, some of us may miss the art of the deal if you were particularly well suited for it.

It’s really easy to not like dealers right now with their unscrupulous ADM’s , but it certainly cuts both ways.

I don't think the younger demographic likes the art of haggling/deal making than us older farts. Add in > 50% of the population is female (I'm sure there is at least 5 gals here who likes haggling, but we all sorta know how car salesmen treat women normally).

As we die off, people expect to order online, bring to me experience probably. Most folks also buy cars not that often so I think it's an overall win. The stress of worrying about no ADM, price protection is higher for me honestly than me thinking my deal making is really that good.

I think for a lot of us who haggled under MSRP, +200 over invoice in the old days was merely because the manufacturer had a bad supply chain model where they had more cars than buyers. If the old model was like applied to the Ford GT, no one was getting that car for Invoice so the counter argument that it was better before was simply because Ford/other auto makers were inefficient in managing production vs. demand.

 

[Boselka]

Sarcastic our serious? I've seen lots of ads on various websites, etc... most were a year or two ago. Here are some…

I read what Farley is saying as they are not going to do Traditional advertising. Meaning things like paying for Super Bowl ads. I imagine they will go the route many companies do where they produce videos about their products, but they don’t spend the additional hundreds of millions of dollars to have them aired on TV.

 

[Motomax]

I don't think the younger demographic likes the art of haggling/deal making than us older farts. Add in > 50% of the population is female (I'm sure there is at least 5 gals here who likes haggling, but we all sorta know how car salesmen treat women normally).

As we die off, people expect to order online, bring to me experience probably. Most folks also buy cars not that often so I think it's an overall win. The stress of worrying about no ADM, price protection is higher for me honestly than me thinking my deal making is really that good.

I think for a lot of us who haggled under MSRP, +200 over invoice in the old days was merely because the manufacturer had a bad supply chain model where they had more cars than buyers. If the old model was like applied to the Ford GT, no one was getting that car for Invoice so the counter argument that it was better before was simply because Ford/other auto makers were inefficient in managing production vs. demand.

No haggling needed. When I bought my 4runner I just emailed every dealership within a reasonable distance. Ignore every response that won’t give you a price. I was OTD for less than MSRP including California tax/license and my only email response was I’ll be there tomorrow . I did the same thing with the Mach e and x-plan. That “invoice” price is BS btw.
I can see some people getting screwed by having a crappy local dealer and not being willing to drive but I’m definitely not a fan of this one price for all model. It definitely won’t stop ADMs, Tesla is proof of that. It’ll probably make service more expensive (although who would use a dealership for non warranty work…). I guess we’ll just have to wait for “sales” on end of year models.

 

[ZoNiE]

I really like his comments on focusing on customer experience after the sale. He must read this forum!

Agreed. Hope the experience moves towards a Lexus type model. We had three of them before the Mach-e and the after sales experience is what kept us coming back more than the cars. If they had an EV...

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