Ford Mustang Sales In Europe and China Are Challenging Those In US

In a global economy, the notion of an 'American' or 'European' or 'Chinese' brand may be passe. JL

Kyle Stock reports in Bloomberg:

The pony car may be as American as bourbon, Steve McQueen and, well, the mustang, but today one in four of these machines is bound for drivers in China, the U.K. and Germany. (Ford says it’s even sold 17 in Bulgaria.) Demand for the Mustang outside the U.S. is double what (was)expected. Capitalizing on that success, Ford added Brazil and five other countries
It took 50 years and more than 9 million Mustang sales before Ford Motor Co. decided its beloved, blue-collar icon was mature enough for a grand tour of Europe and the rest of the world. The strategy’s success suggests the company should have shipped them sooner.
Near the end of 2015, the latest version of the famous car rolled into 140 countries. Decked out for its 50th anniversary with a major update in design and engineering, the Mustang was met with a rush of orders from fans who had been waiting decades to get one. By 2017, Mustang sales were swooning in the U.S. as the new model’s novelty faded, but foreign buyers proved more faithful, fueling a steady stream of orders to the plant in Flat Rock, Michigan, where the Mustang is made.
The pony car may be as American as bourbon, Steve McQueen and, well, the mustang, but today one in four of these machines is bound for drivers in China, the U.K. and Germany. (Ford says it’s even sold 17 in Bulgaria.) This four-wheeled fever dream for generations of young American men—the stuff of Bruce Springsteen fables—has finally gone continental.

“It’s very much a piece of the American dream that has actually been able to move,” said Ian Fletcher, a London-based auto analyst for IHS Markit. “It’s still a very, very niche vehicle, but people see it and they want to buy it. It’s a heart-and-soul thing.”

All told, Ford said demand for the Mustang outside the U.S. is double what it expected. Capitalizing on that success, this year Ford added Brazil and five other countries to its Mustang paddock.
What’s more, foreign buyers are a hugely profitable piece of business, since Mustangs headed overseas tend to be decked out  in the most lavish trim. A bareback version starts at around $26,000 in the U.S., but buyers abroad are limited to a “Performance Pack,” pushing up the starting price to almost $54,000 in the U.K. and Germany.
It turns out that Ford hit a masterstroke in product strategy, even besting such continental sports cars as the Porsche 911, which the Mustang now outsells in the German market. The coup also revealed a missed opportunity, providing ample evidence that Ford left piles of money on the table over the decades.
“It’s always funny when you see the ‘experts’ in an industry get something this wrong,” said Karl Brauer, executive publisher at Cox Automotive.

To be fair, selling an American car abroad is trickier than stacking a boat with shipping containers. Assembly lines have to be retooled to put steering wheels on the right-hand side—which isn’t cheap. Countries also have their own safety and emissions regulations, and these often vary. A range of engineering specifications, from how headlights are configured to the height of a hood, need to be met before a vehicle can enter a market.
While Ford didn’t pull the global trigger on earlier versions of the Mustang, the company decided the 50th anniversary was time to go all-in. “It was a pretty ballsy move, really,” Fletcher, at IHS, said. “There was no guarantee it was going to sell.”
The big hurdle, according to Brauer, was cultural. The Mustang has always been the quintessential American car, a red-white-and-blue bit of financial engineering that married high straight-line speeds with shockingly low sticker prices. It represents the same magical intersection of value and volume that Ford hit a century ago with its Models A and T.
Mileage and cornering ability—major considerations for most buyers in Asia and Europe—were afterthoughts in an American market where torque is king. “It is so genuinely and intrinsically American, there was always an assumption it wouldn’t work as well elsewhere,” Brauer explained.
The performance argument, however, started fading about 15 years ago, when Mustangs suddenly began to turn relatively well, stopped chugging gas and generally developed some road manners.