Ford finds renewed Focus in Sync for 2008
SEATTLE, WASH. — Hop into your “car of the future,†start it up, and hit the road. You’ve digested the local and national news and weather on your favorite radio station, and it’s time for some tunes. Tap a steering-wheel-remote button with your right thumb, and, without taking your hands from the wheel or your eyes from the road, the car asks for a command. Say: “USB,†and it connects to the MP3 player you had connected to the USB jack. Say “Neil Young,†and it immediately begins to play the newly released music from a 1971 concert at Massey Hall in Toronto.
Say the name of a different playlist, and say, “Shuffle,†and immediately your favorite tunes are playing in random order through the high-tech sound system.
Oops! You forgot to tell your wife something before you left, so you click the phone steering-wheel button, and — still without taking your eyes off the road or hands off the wheel – you are asked whether you want to retrieve voice messages, have text messages read aloud to you, or make a call. Say, “Call Joan†— if your wife’s name happens to be the same as my wife’s name, and immediately the car calls your wife’s cell-phone. In a couple of seconds, you are talking to her via the car’s sound system.
There are some cars that will do some of those things already, but the most sophisticated system I’ve experienced is no longer a “car of the future” trick, but will be available from any Ford dealer as soon as the renovated 2008 Focus hits the showrooms. Ford has worked out an extremely user-friendly deal with Microsoft, to install and coordinate a system called Sync into the Focus, and it will be available in a dozen Ford vehicles by the end of the 2008 model year.
That’s why Ford summoned auto journalists to Seattle, which is the home base of Bill Gates’s Microsoft empire. We even got to visit the “Redmond Campus†at Microsoft’s headquarters in the Seattle suburb of Redmond. If you’re using a computer to work, correspond, or just live nowadays, you are familiar with Microsoft. Yes, you may be frustrated at how often the Microsoft “Windows†operating system acts like “Big Brother†to dominate your computer, but Microsoft officials point out that the company also makes many of the operating system things for Apple, its largest competitor.
Besides, Sync is programmed to work with every system, offering a vast array of possibilities from within your Focus. You can code your Bluetooth wireless phone into the system, and it installs all your preset names, numbers and messages into Sync. It can handle and keep separate a dozen phones at once, readily identifying which is being used at that moment. It won’t allow anyone else access to private numbers on your phone, responding only to whatever phone it detects as belonging to the person accessing it.
You can also code Microsoft’s own “Zune†music system, or Apple’s competing iPod, or any other, and Sync will digest and operate any function by voice command. Whatever you’re doing is displayed on a small screen on the top of the dashboard, so if you do feel the urge to glance at it, your eyes only need to move a tiny bit before returning to the road. Sync will allow you to operate any portable device, including a USB flash drive, if you’ve coded information or music onto it.
Once you’ve got the tunes playing, you can click up to the next one with another thumb switch, or you can just call out the command to play a certain title, artist, album title, or genre. Auto journalists may be more conditioned to new car features, but we also are an impatient lot that tends to trust our hunches and experiences to guess at what might work ergonomically. And we had little-to-no trouble making Sync work.
Tom Gibbons, the corporate vice president for specialized devices and applications in the entertainment and devices division of Microsoft, seems to have coordinated everything except, perhaps, a way to shorten his professional title. He explained how Sync came to be, and how, in our emerging and current digital lifestyle, the emphasis was on making it user-friendly to operate, and also readily update-able to cope with whatever might be coming next from any gadget manufacturer.
“When I first got into a Focus with Sync installed, I didn’t read any directions,†Gibbons said. “We wanted a system that anyone could get into and use without reading any directions. We had talked to Ford often, and wanted to make sure our vision was the same for Sync – otherwise you can’t get two elephants to dance.Ââ€
Great analogy. Microsoft is an elephant in the china shop of electronic gadgetry, and Ford is an elephant in the automotive business. From Ford’s standpoint, being identified as an elephant is far superior to be seen as a dinosaur, and the new Focus not only meets the standards of the highest-tech operating system convenience, but as an entirely revised compact car.
While every new-car buyer seems to want the latest in gadgetry these days, the cars they seek fluctuate. The trend toward large SUVs has abated, and Ford marketing wizard George Pipas said that the only two automotive categories that are growing right now are crossover SUVs and small cars. That trend has found that people who have bought larger cars are moving down to smaller vehicles, and those who have bought cars in the “B†(subcompact) or “C†(compact) segments are staying there.
Ford’s plan for the immediate future is to become more competitive in the combined B-C segment, which will take some doing. Pipas points out that Toyota has six cars in that combined segment, while Ford has one – the Focus. A problem with U.S. manufacturers is that while concentrating on more profitable large cars and SUVs, they have allowed the small-car segment to escape. So to speak. Seventy-six percent of the B-C segment belongs to import brands.
“We’ve been very short-sighted,†Pipas said, adding that he agrees with new Ford CEO Alan Mulally’s view. “Don’t look at the Focus as a profit center, but as a portal. Our participation in the segment gives us a portal to the battleground.Ââ€
Over the last two decades, bean-counters and zealous U.S. car-maker advocates boasted of kissing off the small-car segment while building high-profit larger vehicles, but Pipas and others now realize that the hundreds of thousands of small-car buyers who bought a Corolla or Civic not only found they had a good car, but it was good enough that that 76 percent of small-car buyers also purchased good reason to stay with Toyota or Honda or other import brands.
The new car could be renamed the “Portal,†but it remains the Focus, and it remains the U.S. Focus. It is not the long-awaited European Focus, where it is a high-end small car, with a platform from the Volvo S40, a powerful engine from Mazda, and sophisticated suspension engineered by Ford of Germany. In Europe, popularity of small cars has led to a strong market for premium small cars, and Ford has decided the current European Focus would be too expensive, and would leave Ford without an entry in the inexpensive B-C fight.
So a revised model of the current Focus is, in Pipas’s view, the most important vehicle Ford is introducing. It must give Ford a slice of the B-C segment, while awaiting the help that is on the way. Ford showed a new Verve last week at the Frankfurt Auto Show, and it is basically a new version of the Fiesta-sized “B†car, which will be coming to the U.S. in another year or two. Once that is established, the next-generation revision of the Focus will probably be the European model.
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For now, though, the new Focus needn’t be a letdown. The existing Focus has been a worthy compact, fairly fun to drive, and quite economical and dependable. The new model improves on every aspect. The design shows off a new grille with well-styled headlights that turn up and lead to the top line of the silhouette. A neatly indented panel accents the side, and the new car is immediately identifiable as being different. Same with the suspension, which has been firmed up for far better cornering stability, and with the interior, which has a satin-silver dashboard, different instrument panel, and much improved seats.
It also comes in either 4-door or an all-new 2-door coupe. Either can be had in basic S, mid-range SE, or top-level SES. The 2.0-liter Mazda-based 4-cylinder engine has 140 horsepower and 136 foot-pounds of torque with either a 4-speed automatic or a 5-speed manual. The engine works well with the automatic, and, typically, has a sportier and peppier demeanor with the stick, and should achieve 30-35 miles per gallon.
The S model starts at $14,695, with the SE at $15,695, and the SES at $16,695 for the coupe and $16,995 for the sedan.
All models have the improved handling and styling, and much-improved safety features on their front-wheel-drive Focuses. The Sync feature comes standard on the top SES models, and is an available option at $399 on the middle SE models.
The Focus, therefore, is pivotal to allow Ford to focus on the B-C segment, and Sync could be an enormous tool to help synchronize that plan.
Malibu, CTS, VUE, Saab 9-3 pace GM’s 2008 fleet
JOLIET, ILL. — The 2008 model year could be pivotal in General Motors’ attempt to hold off Toyota’s surge to be the top-selling auto manufacturer in the world, and after a sample of most of the GM arsenal – including all-new models of Cadillac CTS, Chevrolet Malibu, Saturn VUE, Saab 9-3, and the functional two-mode hybrid GMC Yukon SUV – the General appears the best its been equipped for the battle.
The Malibu may be the spotlight vehicle for GM overall, because it is all-new and impressive, even though we didn’t get a chance to drive the display model. The new Malibu will be pushed hard for Car of the Year consideration, although it is a fraternal twin to the Saturn Aura, the 2007 Car of the Year, and shares the Opel Vectra platform from GM’s German affiliate.
Cadillac, which led the current GM redesigning charge with the CTS, has slightly restyled and thoroughly tightened the new CTS, giving its potent 3.6-liter V6 a healthy upgrade in power. The Yukon Hybrid was much more impressive than the PR-only previous GM truck hybrid, which only kept the accessories functioning while shutting down the big V8 engine at stoplights. The VUE is a dazzling redesign for 2008, worthy of its own review. But the star of the show, in my mind, was the new Saab 9-3, which has what I declare is my favorite General Motors engine.
The site of the one-day display was the Autobahn Country Club, a wonderful suburban Chicago place where members can belong to a country club that offers the chance to drive on a road-racing track instead of to play golf. So we got to try out the new stuff on the road course as well as on regional streets and highways.
One of the highlights of the day was to sit at a lunch table with Mark LaNeve, who used to be at Cadillac and now is general manager of sales, service and marketing for General Motors. LaNeve is sort of out of the Bob Lutz mold, an executive who isn’t shy about making bold statements, and, like GM’s most prominent vice president, LaNeve also is at his best when he varies from the prepared text.
“This will be an exciting couple of years, not just for GM, but for the whole industry,†said LaNeve, “We are engaged in global competition, and the winners are going be the companies that can compete globally. We are truly global…one global enterprise in design, engineering and manufacturing.Ââ€
The script explained how GM has tightened itself with shorter life cycles, better quality, lower cost, and reducing reliance on rental sales and incentives to improve profit margins, and said, “After working incredibly hard to get our product quality to world-class levels…†but LaNeve’s actual comments were more candid and incisive.
“When we were great,†he said, “we had trend-setting design and technology. We’ve got to get back to that. As for quality and our production processes, we’ve got that taken care of…We’re not going to fool the public with clever marketing. The companies that make great products are going to win, and we are truly focused on building great products.Ââ€
LaNeve also told the assembled Midwest Auto Media Association members that GM and Chevrolet trucks are well in place, but Chevrolet had the “need to re-establish it as having the best cars.Ââ€
I was both surprised and impressed by those comments. GM’s public statements never acknowledged the shortcomings most of the media had been chronicling over the last two decades. It was arrogance that contributed greatly to GM’s weakening, and it is truly refreshing to hear an executive admit that GM had faltered, and is – present tense — in the process of re-establishing its quality, and correcting the problems.
The Malibu, LaNeve said, will be the “new star of the lineup,†with that intention. “We didn’t build a replacement for the Malibu, we built what we think is best for that part of the market – a completely new car. We kept the Malibu name, and frankly, I’m tired of new names.†Market research interviewed buyers considering Camry, Accord, Altima and Sonata, he added, and asked what it would take to get them to consider a Chevy.
The resulting input, LaNeve said, led to the new Malibu . “We wanted to build a car that looks $40,000, for half of that. In the 1980s and ’90s, we really didn’t build cars like that.Ââ€
The 2008 Malibu will start at $19,995, right on target. “And that will include an automatic transmission,†LeNeve said. “The Accord, Camry, and Altima don’t offer an automatic at their base price. I’m not going to say that’s a ‘bait and switch,’ but…Ââ€
After his speech, I had to challenge LaNeve on only that one comment, which was spontaneous and unscripted. “Does the Malibu come with a stick shift?†I asked him. After saying that the automatic could be manually shifted, he said that no, it didn’t come with a manual.
“Well then, the Accord, Camry, and Altima do offer sticks, so they offer something the Malibu doesn’t offer,†I pointed out. “Their automatics aren’t that expensive, so maybe their ‘bait and switch’ is your ‘switch and bait.’ ”
At that point, Steve Hill, manager of GM’s North Central Region, came to LaNeve’s defense. “Only 2 percent of midsize buyers buy manual transmissions,†he said.
“Maybe, but that number might be higher if Chevy offered one,†I shot back. “Zero percent of Malibu buyers will be able to buy a stick.Ââ€
So the low percentage of stick-shift buyers is where market research can prompt a self-fulfilling prophecy, considering that none of the GM midsize offerings have one available. That, however, was about the only slip I found in the whole presentation.
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A Malibu Hybrid also will be introduced with the Malibu fleet this fall, which could also lift the brand name in public estimation. “We’ve lost a lot of ground in the midsize segment,†LaNeve added. “We’re not proud of it, but we know what we did wrong, and we’re correcting it. We don’t think high fuel prices are temporary, or that there’s public concern with global climate change.Ââ€
With GM’s new crop of vehicles, including hybrids, Flex-Fuel E85 vehicles, and other technology, LaNeve said “I’m very optimistic – more than I’ve ever been.Ââ€
The CTS, like the Malibu, Aura, VUE, and other GM cars, will deploy a more powerful version of the outstanding 3.6 V6, which has dual overhead camshafts, four valves per cylinder, and variable valve-timing. Power, however, has not been the engine’s problem. It has not delivered up to the standards of its EPA estimates.
The one version of the rapidly expanding 3.6 is the one GM sends to Australia, where its Holden affiliate reduces its displacement to 2.8 liters, and tubrocharges it, then sends it to Sweden where Saab puts it into the 9-3 model. I drove the Corvette, which was awesome on the road course, and the CTS, VUE, Buick Lucerne Super, and other vehicles, but the most impressive was the Saab 9-3 Conti wagon, which has the 2.8 V6 turbo with a 6-speed stick. It was fantastic.
Chevy dealers will do well with the Malibu, but they’d better hope their sportiest customers don’t check out the Saab dealer before deciding.
About the Author
John Gilbert is a lifetime Minnesotan and career journalist, specializing in cars and sports during and since spending 30 years at the Minneapolis Tribune, now the Star Tribune. More recently, he has continued translating the high-tech world of autos and sharing his passionate insights as a freelance writer/photographer/broadcaster. A member of the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year jury since 1993. John can be heard Monday-Friday from 9-11am on 610 KDAL(www.kdal610.com) on the "John Gilbert Show," and writes a column in the Duluth Reader.
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