Ford in crisis launches electric Puma Gen-E built in Romania

The reasons for this implosion are many: obviously on the one hand there are the CO2 limits, the impositions of electric policy and the aftermath of the perfect storm of covid and chip shortages. But there is more: a combination of bad choices in terms of line-up with models that only to see them at launch smelled like flops, brand positioning and technological choices. All within a strategy that in fact betrayed the legacy of Ford's DNA, Fordism and the idea of democatic automotive technological development: cars for everyone.

We have seen in recent years the demise of the Fiesta, a European workhorse, but the Puma alone was not enough to compensate, clumsy attempts to push on the premium front (with brands such as Vignale) and other peregrine ideas of a self-referential marketing that does not see the reality of the facts. Not to mention the flop of the beautiful Mustang Much-E, unlucky because it was born in the covid, but in fact unable, now, to hold its own against competition on the electric. All this is topped off by a communication and marketing strategy that to define ineffective is an understatement (with an obsession to involve digital creators and influencers that, however, in the automotive sector do not influence anything).

All this with a desertification of ideas: where has the simple and ingenious Ford of the C-Max, the Kuga and the Mondeo gone? It has stumbled in the race towards the electrco, perhaps giving customers to Skoda, but also to DR and many Chinese. And what can we say about the latest EV models made in Cologne, based on the Vw Meb and built under an agreement with Volkswagen that is no longer in force: the Explorer and the latest Capri, which sounds almost like an insult to the legendary coupé, the symbol and icon of that European Ford that has a hundred years of history and has perhaps reached the end of its tether.