It's that time of year when all the
carmakers want to show off their latest wares for the upcoming model year and Ford invited the media out to their
Dearborn Development Center to try out some of what's new for 2008. Before we got a chance to actually hop in the vehicles and find out what's what, we had to sit through a couple of speeches.
First up was Group Vice President, North America Marketing, Sales and Service
Cisco Codina with a rundown on Ford's marketing efforts. In spite of all Ford's struggles of late there are a few bright spots. The company's crossovers are flourishing as well as proliferating with the sales of the redesigned Escape up thirteen percent in June and the Edge recently moving into the top spot in it's category ahead of the Toyota Highlander. According to
Cisco, the new Taurus has over 501 improvements compared to the Five Hundred. Five hundred of them came from the engineers with one coming from marketing in the form of a new name. So far response to the new Taurus seems positive with Automotive Leasing Group estimating that the Taurus will retain 49% of it's value after three years, up from a figure in the mid thirties for the old model.
Read on after the jump for the rest of what happened in
Dearborn.
