Ford's new commercial for their Mustang Mach-E stars Chevy Chase recreating his Christmas lights scene from "Christmas Vacation". It's a very clever commercial for Ford's all-electric SUV combining one of the most memorable scenes from a Christmas movie classic with what some decree as the future of transportation conveyances. It's great fun and hopefully foretells a Super Bowl telecast this February chock full of similarly smart and creative commercials.
That said, while it is a tad disconcerting to see how old Clark and Ellen have gotten, I'd love to do a Zoom call with whomever at the Ford Motor Company thinks it a good idea to badge an electric Focus as a Mustang. And a Mach to boot. Knowing corporate culture to the degree I do all I can say is probably some stuffed suit came up with the idea and a bunch of equally stuffed know-nothing's just went along with the all-electric ride. Seriously, this is the worst idea Ford has had since the Mustang II. Lee Iacocca is no doubt spinning in his grave.
Yes, I know. These are old-car guy statements that may make me appear as fossilized as Jay Leno but I'm of the opinion that Ford is making a grievous marketing mistake here branding what many would refer to as a truck as a "Mustang". Good grief. I mean, GM would never do this with Corvette or even Camaro. Bad enough "Blazer" is now festooned to a dressed down Cadillac XT5 but at least it's still in line with the vehicles utility based past.
Understand that this thing being an all-electric vehicle has nothing to do with my being verklempt. While the technology behind the Mustang Mach-E might just as well be rocket science, branding this a Mustang is just another leg kicked out of the table of automobile manufacturers producing vehicles that people actually want as opposed to needing them. This fascinating thing might as well be a refrigerator or a dishwasher - after all it is all electric - and Ford has flushed away more than fifty-five years of Mustang brand identity and essence. How do you concisely explain to friends and neighbors that this is a "Mustang". You know what they say about once you start explaining.
I get that Ford put their famous galloping pony on this thing to help create awareness and excitement for it. Ford hoping to make inroads into the burgeoning electric vehicle market now apparently dominated by Tesla; their ugly and weird looking SUV that could all but pass for this thing. However, it comes at the expense of more harm to the Mustang brand than the "Mustang II" did.
I applaud the technology and apparently the Mustang Mach-E is a terrific performer although I think it's far too early in the gestation of electric vehicle development to consider them truly mainstream. The downsides to all-electrics are still egregious - limited range and challenges with charging. The Mustang Mach E, which is stupid-expensive, can only go a maximum of three-hundred miles per charge and takes overnight to boot up as well. Yes, you can fast charge it and get some limited range but compared to the gas-it and go of conventional vehicles, these electrics still have a long way to go in terms of proving their reliability and getting an economically efficient network of charging stations established. To say nothing, again, of the limited range of a vehicle that fully loaded will set you back around $70,000 when it's all said and done. Say that slowly and it sounds like even more money - seventy-thousand dollars. That's a lot of necks, Clark.
Oh, and pick this bone - show me a cost analysis where an electric vehicle actually saves the owner money in the long run and is better for the environment too since the power you'd be using to charge an electric has to be generated somehow. Most often times, yes, even here in George Jetson like 2020 going on 2021, that power is generated using fossil fuels. To me, these things are not only robbing Peter to pay Paul, you're robbing Luke and John too since once these things are out of warranty, pity the fool who's got to foot repair bills for it.
However, this isn't meant to be about my cynicism towards electric vehicles as much, again, as it is about the body-slam that Ford is doing to it's most iconic brand. I was just a kid when Ford rolled out the sad, "Pinto-based" Mustang II and even I could tell then the thing was going to be an adroit failure. At least those weak-kneed little "II's" were more closely aligned with what "Mustang" meant than the Mustang Mach-E means.
Mustangs of yore may have handled like they had square stone wheels, guzzled gas like a Cadillac and were gross polluters, but in terms of designs inspiring a devil-may-care freedom and independence, there was nothing like them. What's more they instilled buyers of hoary LTD's with a sense that although they didn't get a Mustang, the family-car they did get shared the same locker room if not some DNA as the bad-ass Mustang.
Thank goodness the current Mustang (the car, not this "truck") not only lives up to the image of the iconic Mustangs of yesteryear but far exceeds them since they actually deliver in spades whatever image they're portending. Oh, you may have thought at first that this Mach-E uses a Mustang chassis but that's not the case. The Mustang Mach-E shares only its name with it's alleged stablemate. And, again, the point of that being?
Everything old is new again and history always repeats itself, isn't that what they say? Only this time Ford is screwing around with "Mustang", a brand so venerable that back in the 1990's, legend has it, that the Mustang-nation literally bucked so violently when news broke that their stead was going front-wheel drive that Ford acquiesced and thought better of it. What about now? How could this have happened? How it the name of Edsel Ford does the Ford Motor Company think naming this a "Mustang" is a good idea. Shoot, call it the "Model-E" playing off "Model-T" for crying out loud.
I respect the technology in the "Mustang Mach-E" especially considering how far electrics have come in the last ten to twenty years. Just please, don't call it a Mustang.
I'll go out on a limb here and all but guarantee that Ford drops "Mustang" on this thing by model year 2023. Mark my words. Make that "Mach my words".
No comments:
Post a Comment