Totally agree with David there. Mondeo ST24, ST170, Cougar and Probe are all examples of half hearted attempts by Ford Australia to inject spice into their small to medium sport segment. Even their regular (non falcon based) cars have not done as well as they should have.
Look at Escape vs Tribute and Laser vs 323 recently. Mazda outsold Ford in almost every (and possibly every) single model range there. In a car that was identical. The Laser when it was built here outsold the 323, but when they switched to fully importing it, Ford quickly languished behind Mazda. They then axe the Laser and give us Focus (with so much teasing the model looked outdated by the time we got it!), but it did not meet the initial bullish sales expectations.
The products are great, so there's a marketing problem, either to the public or through the dealers.
BTW, the new Tigra with its metal roof is a bit of a slug with the 1.8. But, not any slower than the slug 206 CC, so it's on par.
Also, the Ka is highly successful in the UK. I'm actually a fan of it, but the micro car market is very tough. You have to commit to it and market to it, otherwise noone knows it's there. The margins on these cars is small, but you have to get people into the brand so they can move up into larger cars in the same brand later. So you have to invest in the small cars with your marketing. Not expect that they will just sell on their own merits and make a massive profit on them.
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