Ford’s Mulally Resurrects Taurus Brand

Ford Motor’s Chief Executive Alan Mulally has made at least one right decision since taking over in September. He has reversed the bone-headed move to scrap the Taurus name. “How can it go away?” he remembered asking in an MSNBC interview. “It’s the best-selling car in America.” So effective right away, the 2008 edition of the Ford Five Hundred sedan is going to be known as the 2008 Ford Taurus. The only question is whether the car will live up to its heritage.

The Ford Taurus lasted 21 years and had about 7 million buyers. For a few years, it was the best-selling car in America. In short, it was a success. In an interview with the Associated Press, Mr. Mulally said, “The Taurus, of course, has been an icon for Ford and its customers. The customers want it back. They didn’t want it to go away. They wanted us to keep improving it.” Apparently, no one else at Ford has such a solid grip on what should have been obvious.

Mr. Mulally went on to say, “Think of how much time and attention and money it takes to establish a brand. It’s going to take unlimited effort and time to try to build up the brand that we have with the Taurus.” Branding, as he clearly understands, ties a symbol (“Taurus,” “Coke,” “Louis Vuitton”) to a quality product. Then, whenever a consumer sees the symbol, there is an implicit assurance that the same quality exists in the new product. Ford was essentially throwing out an incredibly valuable symbol for no real reason.

However, branding also requires that the product line continue to possess the quality to reinforce the brand. The Five Hundred, which is a rather dull beast built on a Volvo frame (hardly the sort of thing to set the world on fire), hasn’t been embraced by car buyers. Its 2005 model year sales (the first full year it was out) were adequate at 108,000, but last year dropped to 84,000.

So, Ford is giving the 2008 Five Hundred a/k/a Taurus a bigger engine, standard electronic stability control and some cosmetic touches. The name will likely get people to look at it, test drive it and quite possibly buy it. After that, it’s a matter of automotive engineering. Nonetheless, Mr. Mulally gets top marks for realizing the company had made a mistake and for correcting it.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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