The differences couldn't be more evident. Mark Fields announced that Ford Motor Company is renaming the Five Hundred with the old Taurus name at a Chicago Auto Show breakfast. Freestyle becomes Taurus X (for crossover - get it?) and Mercury Montego becomes Sable.
Makes it hard to avoid the cliche, "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic." Ford figures the new old names will resonate better with customers who wonder why the company stopped building such a good rental car.
Five Hundred, Montego and Freestyle apparently had better name recognition in their first year on the market, 2005, when Ford sold nearly 220,000 of them. Last year, combined sales dropped 24 percent, to 165,100.
Later that morning, over in the next room, Toyota introduced its new-generation Highlander Hybrid crossover SUV. (See Motor Trend's video) U.S. sales chief Don Esmond noted that the company had sold more than 170,000 hybrids in 2006.
"Hybrid" is a generic name for the gas engine/electric motor power-plants that Toyota has pioneered in the last decade. It's a more successful name for Toyota than Five Hundred/Freestyle/Montego -- or whatever you call them -- is for Ford.
And the renamed, face-lifted Fords will have to do very well to catch Toyota and Lexus hybrids this year. The Japanese automaker expects to sell more than a quarter-million of 'em in '07.
But any success for the Fords ought not to be attributed to marketing. The three-bar grille facelift on the Taurus and Taurus X make them look sleeker than the dowdy Five Hundred and Freestyle. And the new 3.5-liter V-6 provides much needed extra power versus the old 3.0-liter. Also, Ford moved the engines off the front subframe mount, and farther back on the frame, allowing more freedom to tweak the front suspension.
To compete against crossovers like the Taurus X, Toyota offers its 2008 Highlander, due in showrooms in July (The hybrid version launches in September).
The Highlander is three inches wider and nearly four inches longer, with an extra inch of ground clearance and three inches of wheelbase compared to the 2003-07 model. It's better looking, too, like a bigger RAV4, and it gets a new, 270-horsepower 3.5-liter V-6.
It comes with a bevy of new standard safety equipment, including seven airbags. The '08 model is 300 to 400 pounds heavier than the old Highlander, and yet Toyota claims fuel economy will be virtually unchanged (If you count economy using today's EPA testing procedures -- a new '08 test will seriously lower every car and truck's official estimated fuel economy).
Consumers might have trouble remembering the names of Ford's sedans and crossovers, but they have no problem thinking about fuel economy, and equating "hybrid" with Toyota
