Ford heads for familiar Territory

FORD’S vital new locally-built Territory cross-over wagon does not go on sale until June 1, 2004, but potential buyers could be sampling them as much as two months earlier.

That’s the strategy outlined by Ford Australia resident Geoff Polites as the company continues to grapple with one of its most important new model launches ever.

It would mean exposing the public to “pre-job one” examples of Territory and the possible quality issues that go with that.

"Quite clearly we have to do a job to educate people and give them experience on this (Territory)," Mr Polites said.

"The more we can do with letting people see, feel, touch and drive the car prior to the actual job one, the better.

"So we are trying to see whether we can do that."Ford’s intention is far more ambitious than simply letting potential buyers go for a cruise around the block. It is considering supplying Territorys to dealers to loan out for a full day or even overnight.

But the one restriction would appear to be no off-roading.

"We’d have to discuss that," Mr Polites said.

He also acknowledged the risk of rolling pre-production cars out to the public.

"It could be (dangerous), but that’s the challenge for us," he said. "We have to be able to build these cars to a standard we would be happy with."Territory on-sale has been held back to June 1 to give Ford’s new European light car, the Fiesta, launch space. It goes on sale in April.

The Territory is a high-rise wagon with up to seven seats that will be offered in both two and stability control-based four-wheel drive.

Pricing is expected to start under $40,000 for the base model rear-wheel drive version. Two specification levels will be sold.

It will offer 4.0-litre inline six-cylinder power only, with a turbo version mooted as a possibility. There will be no V8 version offered initially.

Ford aims to eventually sell 30,000 Territorys per annum, although Mr Polites was forecasting a staggered build up of sales.

"In the first few months I think we will be 1200, 1400, 1500. It will take a while to ramp up, it won’t hit 2000 per month straightaway," he said.

Mr Polites said a strong aspect of the Territory business case was that most of its sales should be incremental.

"When we did all those assumptions of draw and incrementality this has about the highest degree of incrementality of any program that we have assumed," he said.

"In other words we see less draw out of this than any other product that we have (studied). We think there will be some substitution. But don’t forget the other guy (Holden) sells wagons. He sells 15,000 wagons a year. If I got half of them I wouldn’t be unhappy."Ford has been leaking details of the $500 million Territory project all year, beginning with the reveal of the shape at the Melbourne motor show in March.

At the Sydney motor show last month the interior was shown for the first time, although no-one was allowed too close.

Mr Polites said the response to Territory at the Sydney show had been "outstanding" on an anecdotal basis.

"We had people who were prepared to write orders there and then, members of the public," he said. "But we aren’t taking orders as yet."Instead, Ford was taking names ande-mail addresses as it builds a data bank of potential buyers for the Territory launch.

It is the same strategy as BA Falcon. In that case, Ford had a 100,000-strong data bank by the time the car was launched.

"We have no reason to be in any way not confident that we will achieve what we set out to do," Mr Polites said.

"Every clinic we have done we have got as good or better result than we could have hoped for."