Ford "don't buy" warning for 2021: Endura SUV axed!

Ford named its Kluger competitor the Endura. Now, the non-enduring Endura has been boned in Australia, less than two years after its release. This just satirises itself.

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The Ford Australia house of cards is falling in slow-motion, I think you’ll agree. Personal opinion.

I’m sure Ford is thanking its lucky stars for Ranger and Everest, because without them, the company would be well past the S-bend and on its way to the deep-ocean outfall - along with all the other industry effluent.

The company gave birth to baby Endura here in December 2018, with (one imagines) high hopes of it growing rapidly and taking the lucrative fight to Toyota Kluger and Mazda CX-9 and Hyundai Santa Fe and Kia Sorento … and CX-8, and the Subaru Outback, and even Tiguan Allspace. But all of these SUVs continue to out-sell Endura, which couldn’t even match Skoda Kodiaq on sales. Go figure. Well done, Ford.

Even Holden Acadia out-sold Endura - which is, kinda, a neat trick, for a brand that doesn’t actually exist any more.

So far this year, Toyota’s uber-popular Kluger is living proof that mediocrity is the recipe for outright success in seven-seat SUVs. Mediocre Kluger outsold non-enduring Endura by more than seven to one. CX-9 out-sold it more than five to one. This is a race, with absolutely no need for the video referee.

Ford’s marketing is so bad that (I’m tipping) most SUV buyers don’t even know that a non-enduring Endura ever existed. And now, of course, it doesn’t.

Not being able to sell a large SUV in Australia is like not being able to drink 100 long-necks of VB, every hour. Or being unable to find a venomous reptile within 10 feet of the back door. Not being able to sell a large SUV here is un-Australian.

So Ford has boned this unappealing vehicle, after selling only 1015 non-enduring Enduras - and I wouldn’t want to be one of those owners, or the 1986 punters who bought one in late 2018 or across 2019. Nobody, statistically, wanted a non-enduring Endura, new. Nobody, statistically, is gunna want yours at resale time, used, with three years of your residual farts infused into the seats. 

The term ‘depreciation dog’ springs to mind. Buying a depreciation dog is, of course, a great way to burn cash, and I want you to know that this is not merely idle speculation in this case:

According to Redbook, if you had purchased in 2018 a range-topping non-enduring Endura Titanium at launch for about $68,000 (before on-road costs) it’d trade for about $38,800 today, on average. You’d burn just over $29,000.

If, instead, you’d come to your senses at the 11th hour and procured alternatively a range-topping Mazda CX-9 Azami, for about $66,500, it’d trade today for about $45,000, and you’d burn only about $21,500.

This puts you $7500 behind, in just 23 months, in the Ford. Imagine getting $80 a week and just throwing it out the window, arbitrarily, every Friday afternoon. Because that’s what non-enduring Endura buyers have been doing, effectively. 

This is of course before the market has factored in the discontinuation of the model - which is never a resale positive. So, let’s round it up to $100 a week. Out the friggin’ window.

Ford is continuously one vehicle away from outright collapse here in Australia and that’s the Ranger - and Everest I guess, but that’s an incremental win at best.

Escape has only sold 113 vehicles more than Endura this year so if non-enduring Endura is over the threshold at 1015 sales, Escape must have its toes over the edge on 1128 sales in 2020.

Perhaps this is why Ford is on the record saying it would not expand the Escape line-up to offer a seven-seat version available in other markets, or the plug-in hybrid that’s been plagued with catastrophic design issues orbiting recharging and battery overheating. Ghost of Pinto?

Focus must also be a dead-car walking with just 1703 sales in 2020. Ford used to be so popular here in Australia, spending years bolted onto number three spot behind Toyota and Holden.

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The mighty have fallen

Like Holden though, Ford really went above and beyond in the domain of unacceptable behaviour, this century.

Unacceptably arrogant and brain-bendingly self-entitled, not to mention with a moral compass in desperate need of calibration regarding the return-on-investment for taxpayer funding - Ford has spectacularly burned its reputation with such incredible mainstream appeal.

This is not a hit piece. The facts are inconvenient for Ford, and certainly they won’t like them, but hey - facts are still facts.

I strongly urge you not to ignore the facts if you’re buying a new car any time soon.

This is advice for you about not buying a Ford in the domain of basic financial risk management. Certainly it’s just my opinion, but hopefully somewhat informed.

I cannot prioritise appeasing Ford over the imperative to give you the best informed advice I can based upon actual facts and what I know about the industry.

Look, the kindest I can be is to say: It’s probably okay to buy a Ranger or an Everest. There’s a reasonable demand for them, used. (And they’re reasonably reliable).

But as for the rest of the SUVs and all the cars bearing the blue-oval badge...the risk of your resale value making like Dresden on February 15th, 1945, over the next three to five years is rather high. Some would say, unacceptably high, and I would be one of those saying that.

You might like to think of this as an automotive intelligence test. If you think buying the last of the non-enduring Enduras is a good idea - or most of the rest of the Ford line-up essentially - then you fail this test.

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