Editor's letter: Why Ford has turned its back on affordable transport

Fiesta's departure leaves Puma as the entry point to Ford's line-up

The Blue Oval has laid out an ambitious electrification strategy at odds with its everyman billing

For so many people, cars are an essential. They provide safe, reliable transport, and allow that freedom of mobility. 

Most mainstream car makers understand this. Whatever aspirations they have to become more premium and moved upmarket, they still recognise the need to offer access to their brand. That’s why city cars and superminis have existed, to allow buyers affordable routes into new car ownership, and all the safety and emissions benefits this brings. 

In the past few months, many senior, powerful voices in the industry have lamented the introduction of upcoming Euro 7 emissions regulations as a way of forcing small cars off sale for good, and with the rise of (just as costly) electrification, unlikely to return. The best hope is for those A- and B-segments to merge, and a price of around €20,000 (£17,200) mooted. 

Ford is a company that seems absent from the argument. It seems to be willingly giving up its market-leading position with small cars like the Ford Fiesta (confirmed to be axed in 2023) and are all-in on electric cars. Which is fine, but we’re yet to see a concession to affordability, and the switch to electric is one that requires tact in explaining to customers why the make-up and price of cars in a showroom is not what you’ve always known it to be. (Ford has disapproved of Euro 7, but in the context of diverting resources away from electrification. A fair point.) 

Ford’s everyman positioning in the market is one that should be embraced and protected, not left for dead. The move to electrification is one you can embrace, but also appreciate it is a nuanced debate, and a switch that leaves plenty behind.  

The company invented the very idea of the ordinary person’s access to mobility. When it became clear the Model T would be a success, Henry Ford slashed the price further to make it even more accessible. 

When the Fiesta goes off sale, the brand's least expensive model will be the Ford Puma, which costs just shy of £25,000. Ford’s profitability issues with smaller, more affordable cars with Europe are well known, yet abandoning them all together - and so far ahead of 2030 - seems an easy way out, and against the very ethos on which the company was founded. 

There are plenty of car companies willing to join the debate, however. Kia UK boss Paul Philpott was empathic in saying: “We will keep the Picanto with a 1.0-litre engine going for as long as we can to give people that access point” into new car ownership. “We absolutely intend to stay as a full line-up manufacturer.”

If that means keeping it in the range right up until the 2030 cut-off for internal combustion engined cars on sale, then so be it. Even if inflation keeps the list price creeping up (£13,400 currently in the Picanto’s case), then the target is to keep monthly payments low with good residual values.

“What is important is the monthly payment that people can afford,” said Philpott, although he concedes rising interest rates mean “the days of 0%, 1.9%” in interest rates for new cars are over. 

The city car segment in the UK consists now of the Picanto and the closely related Hyundai i10. The Toyota Aygo X is a slightly different offering, morphing into a mini crossover, but no less admirable in its mission: even if the legislation is effectively trying to force cars like this off the road, Toyota knows it has a social and moral responsibility to continue offering affordable new cars for as long as possible.

Dacia is a company that has built its whole business on offering affordable cars (and it does so), and the market is moving towards it. Boss Denis le Vot has been prepared to go toe-to-toe with the likes of Euro NCAP in deducting safety rating stars - and therefore potentially causing reputational issues for car makers with ‘unsafe’ cars - by not introducing active safety technology. “We don’t sell you lane-keeping assist as we know you turn it off,” he says.

Le Vot is another who has pledged to only go electric at the last possible moment, as cars must stay affordable.

Plenty of others get it, too. The increasingly powerful and influential Volkswagen boss Thomas Schafer rubbished the European Commission’s suggestion that EU7 would be “affordable” in adding around €300 to the price of new cars. He thinks it will be more like €5000, and the end of the Polo is predicted as a result. VW’s comeback in this segment will be electric, and the goal is set to make it cost the same as today’s Polo, a big challenge with the greater cost of batteries.

Then there’s the ever-quotable Stellantis chief Carlos Tavares, who predicts there “will be social unrest” unless politicians realise that the political decision (one he calls “dogmatic and naive”) to move to electric is simply pricing the middle classes out of new cars, and allows for a stay of execution for today’s never-cleaner or more efficient internal combustion engine models as new cars they can afford.

There’s been no pledge from Ford to keep an affordable car on sale for as long as possible like with Kia, Hyundai, Dacia or Toyota, or statements like those made by Schafer and Tavares that at least hint at the disquiet at the decisions made by legislators that is sending the cost of new cars spiralling.

In Europe at least, Ford is straightforwardly ditching its most important, original, 119-year old guiding principle - while others with clearer vision fight to keep it alive. It’s a bold move.