Blue Oval’s small car ends European production in 2025, sparking rumours of EV successor
Once set to be built in Australia, the Ford Focus small car may soon not be built at all.
A Ford announcement and media call this week extolling plans to expand European electric vehicle production also confirmed the end of Ford Focus assembly at the Blue Oval’s Saarlouis plant in Germany in 2025.
The Focus nameplate could then be retired altogether or be applied to a future electric vehicle.
It certainly seems very unlikely there will be a new-generation orthodox Ford Focus, given the car-maker is committing to sell no internal combustion cars in Europe from 2030.
The saving grace for Focus as we know it could be markets outside Europe, as the car is currently also built in China and Taiwan.
But China is committed to going EV so prospects there don’t look great either.
The question marks over Focus reflect a rapid decline in sales driven by the rise of SUVs and crossovers that have also hit it in Australia, albeit on a far more moderate scale than Europe.
There have been four generations of Focus, all of which have been sold in Australia, the first launching in 2002 and the current car in late 2018.
These days only the Focus ST hot hatch is sold here, a far cry from the days when hatches, sedans and even wagons were offered in a variety of specification levels and prices, including the red-hot RS.
The Focus was important enough in Australia for Ford to announce in 2007 that $300 million would be invested to build it at the Broadmeadows plant at a rate of 40,000 per annum for the Asia-Pacific region.
But exactly two years later in 2009 the plan was abandoned and instead $230 million was allocated to the development of new engines for the Ford Falcon and Territory, both of which ended production in 2016.
The crux of Ford’s announcement this week was that the Ford plant in Valencia had beaten Saarlouis for the right to build vehicles on the company’s next-generation vehicle architecture starting later this decade.
Valencia will be a European EV manufacturing centre alongside Cologne in Germany, which starts making an electric SUV based on Volkswagen’s MEB EV platform in 2023.
Ford was quite opaque about the future of Saarlouis and the Focus in its press release, but in a subsequent media roundtable Ford of Europe chairman Stuart Rowley said there would be no replacement for the current Focus at Saarlouis.
“We are seeking other alternative opportunities for vehicle production at Saarlouis, including other manufacturers,” Rowley said.
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Keyword: Ford Focus future in doubt