Ford To Add More Crossovers In Europe, Could Drop The C-Max, S-Max And Galaxy

Earlier this year, Ford announced plans to eliminate a handful of slow selling cars in North America including the Fusion, Fiesta and Taurus. The company will instead focus on trucks and crossovers which are popular with consumers and more profitable for the automaker.

While Ford hasn’t been coy with its plan for North America, the company has been more tight-lipped about Europe. However, that changed last week when the company released its second quarter earnings report.

Noting it was a “particularly challenging quarter for [the] Asia Pacific and Europe [regions],” Ford said it will attempt to reverse the losses in Europe by lowering costs, improving efficiencies and “allocating capital to the segments and products that can generate appropriate returns.” The company didn’t go into specifics, but one slide in the presentation confirmed the automaker is “focused on growing our SUV offerings.”

Auto News Europe reports Ford CEO Jim Hackett said the $73 (€62.3) million pretax loss left the company “extremely dissatisfied” as it will likely mean the European unit won’t be profitable this year. This isn’t too surprising as Ford’s CFO, Bob Shanks, said “The low-performing part of our portfolio represents a majority of our volume, revenue and capital deployed in the region.” Shanks went on to identify these under performers as cars and “multi-activity vehicles” such as the C-Max.

Given the weakness of MPVs, a number of models could be dropped once they reach the end of their lifecycle. Nothing is official, but the C-Max, S-Max and Galaxy could all be on the chopping block.

The fate of the Mondeo is also murky as its North American counterpart is going away. Ford is working on an updated version of the car, but Carsalesbase data shows the company only sold 56,173 Mondeo models in Europe last year. That’s nearly 15,000 units less than 2016 and a fraction of the 163,262 units that were sold in 2008.