General Motors will almost certainly outsell Toyota in the United States this year. Next year? It’s probably going to be a lot closer. By then Ford will have likely recovered from an F-150 shortage caused by a supplier issue, though that won’t be enough to help it crack into the top two in new car sales. Still, Ford has found one area where it can compete with both.
The fact that everything is too damn expensive is helping drive people into used cars, and the most desirable part of the market is in Certified Pre-Owned (CPO) vehicles. As a company, Ford decided it wanted to be competitive in the CPO space and has absolutely killed it.
The Morning Dump has featured a decent amount of consternation at automakers for falling for the EV head fake, but that doesn’t mean EVs aren’t coming, and it would be an equally big mistake to abandon them. Both Subaru and Mitsubishi are working hard to have platforms for the future. Fiat initially launched its new 500 as an EV-only, but has since backtracked to offer a hybrid. In order to celebrate the Fiat 500 hybrid launch, Fiat is helping people “colour match” their new Fiat.
How Ford Topped Toyota In Q3
The brand that brought us such classics as the Tempo and the Fairmont has had a tough year. In addition to a shortage of its best-selling F-Series trucks due to two fires at its main aluminum supplier (in the midst of tariffs that make it harder to import the key metal), the company has also discontinued its entry-level Ford Escape. This follows the end of both the EcoSport and Edge, as well as the last year of Ford’s only sedan, the Taurus. While Ford has had some luck getting owners of Escapes into Bronco Sports and Explorers, the lineup is holier than a Do-Rite old fashioned donut blessed by the Pope.
When the going gets tough, the tough bulk up their CPO program to stop people who came in hoping to get something nice at a certain price from being lost to a competitor. In Q3, Ford’s CPO sales rose to 130,112 vehicles, which was up 44% and put it on top of Toyota for the first time ever. The company’s increase came as the overall CPO market contracted.
How did Ford do it? Rob Kaffl, Ford’s director of U.S. sales and dealer relations, explained some of the moves to Automotive News, including a new package that includes free oil changes and other perks.
“The loyalty play long-term is more important than making a couple bucks on the price of an oil change,” he said.
In October, the company started giving dealers certificates toward new-vehicle sales for each vehicle sold through Ford Blue Advantage. The certificates essentially function as incentives that reduce the price of a new vehicle.
The new promotions partly stem from an internal restructuring that moved the CPO program out of an isolated group in the U.S. sales strategy division and into retail marketing, giving it more advertising and website support.
“We took a team that was competing in the used car market with a slingshot and armed them with a bazooka,” Kaffl said.
A CPO vehicle can be advantageous to dealers, brands, and customers. For a dealer–especially a Ford dealer–it gives something price-competitive to sell that carries a higher profit margin than a regular used vehicle. For a brand, it helps keep a customer loyal and can make it easier to manage off-lease vehicles (Ford, like other automakers, has a bunch of EVs coming off of leases).
For customers, it’s mostly a risk and price calculation. Is it worth paying more? If you can get better financing (Ford is offering 3.99% for 60 months on its used EVs) it might net out cheaper, but what you’re really paying for is the kind of warranty you’re not going to get in a private party sale.
Foxconn Finally Gets Its Mitsubishi Deal
The huge drama of a couple of years ago was the failed merger of Nissan and Honda, which was allegedly caused by a freakout that emerged when Taiwanese company Foxconn was discovered to be sniffing around Nissan. This little episode also revealed that Honda was also maybe more interested in Mitsubishi, which is an automaker that’s not very big here, but has found a niche in a lot of markets where Honda is less competitive.
Foxconn was patient, and has finally put together a deal with Mitsubishi to create a 50-50 JV that would allow the two companies to become a global supplier of various EV platforms that other automakers can use to make cars.
The joint venture — called Mitsubishi Electric Mobility, which is currently a wholly owned subsidiary of Mitsubishi Electric — will combine Foxconn’s scale and speed with Mitsubishi Electric’s technology and manufacturing capabilities, Jun Seki, Foxconn’s chief strategy officer for EVs, said at a news conference.
The partnership comes as Chinese EV makers like BYD rapidly expand their presence in the automotive market that has long been dominated by Japanese and German automakers, which are struggling to switch from their traditional strength in internal combustion technology.
For Foxconn, the partnership is expected to help bolster its EV contract manufacturing business. Best known as an iPhone assembler, the company now generates more than half of its revenue from cloud and networking products, driven largely by AI servers, while smart consumer electronics account for about 30%.
It would be funny if the Apple car came not from Apple, but from the people who actually build the iPhone.
Is Subaru Building An E-WRX?
Right now, Subaru gets its EVs from Toyota. Even the most Subaru of all EVs, the Trailseeker, is just a Solterra with a BBL. That’s not a bad thing, honestly. Toyota has vastly improved its EVs and a friend who just bought one seems to be quite happy with it so far.
Subaru, though, wants its own EV that feels like a Subaru. To that end, the company invited out a few journalists to test a prototype test mule with a widened Outback platform, which one reviewer said feels like an “E-WRX.”
Automotive News has some of the details:
The prototype uses e-axle electric motors developed with Toyota Group supplier Aisin Corp. and batteries developed with Panasonic Energy. Subaru has been jointly developing the technologies with those partners since 2024.
They are more compact and lightweight than comparable motors used in Subaru’s current EVs and achieve a 30 percent increase in efficiency compared with the industry average, engineers said. The prototype uses a 150-kilowatt motor in the front and a 230-kilowatt motor in the rear.
The prototype’s battery pack uses 4,000 cylindrical cells from Panasonic Energy that have been in joint development since September 2024. It achieves a 25 percent weight reduction over the previous battery, and Subaru targets energy density 20 percent above the industry average.
Now I want a lowered and widened Outback.
What Colour Matches Your Personality And Style?
The new Fiat 500 hybrid might be the first example of an automaker building an electric car and then rapidly deciding they needed a non-EV version, though I doubt it’ll be the last (Scout probably did the same thing, but before the car went on sale).
How do you get people excited about a new Fiat? Colors! Here’s some copy from an extremely earnest press release:
FIAT has launched a colour-matching service that reveals which car shade best complements a person’s features.
The science-backed approach is designed to identify the shades that create the most harmonious and flattering look for individuals.
Such techniques are typically used in the fashion industry, but FIAT is now giving motorists the chance to apply them to a new car purchase.
Science-backed! Say what you will about various Fiats, I’ve always appreciated that you could get them in actual colors.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
I forgot that Pitbull, Sean Paul, and T-Pain did a version of “Jump in the Line” called “Shake Senora” that includes the line:
My girl got a big old booty, yeah
Your girl got little booty, oh no
It’s both a completely serviceable dance song, and unintentionally (?) hilarious.
The Big Question
Of all the cars you’ve owned, which color most matched your personality?
Top photo: Ford
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