Ford Australia believes its long history embedded in Australia will stand it in good stead as more rivals to popular models such as the Ranger and Everest seek to take a bite out of its market share.

Ambrose Henderson, Ford Australia’s Marketing Director, suggested to WhichCar by Wheels at the launch of the MY 26.5 Ranger and Everest that the arrival of new competitors into the Australian new market was nothing the Blue Oval hadn’t dealt with before.

“This has been the most competitive market in the world for a long time, and it was that way before the Chinese entered the market and have the impact that they’ve had,” he said.

“We haven’t been here for 101 years in Australia without having to go through changes in the market, Henderson continued. “We’ve seen a bit in our history – two world wars, the GFC, COVID-19, the Great Depression, to name a few.

“What you’re seeing from Ford at every one of those changes in the industry is us refocus on what customers want, address that, deliver and win.”

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That didn’t mean, Henderson stressed, that Ford was not closely watching what its latest crop of rivals are doing

“[We’re] going through that cycle again,” he said. “This is another new wave of competitors. Of course we assess what they are doing, as we would any competitor around the world.”

Where other manufacturers point to ‘Australian tuning’ or ‘Australian testing’ to make their cars relevant to the local customer, Ford is keen to emphasis its long ties to manufacturing in this country as its competitive advantage.

“That’s why its so important that we keep talking about capability today… we believe we have a sustainable long term advantage because we’ve made a decision to invest here and be based here,” he said.

“Capability is important, but to be based here and invest here, is very important. Others, talk about Australian-tuned, but let’s be honest, How much is Australian tuning? How much can you really change on the dynamics of a vehicle? I’d argue it’s little more than 5 per cent which is really insignificant in terms of how a whole vehicle comes together.”

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Watching its competitors included taking note of BYD’s recent announcement of its own ship bringing 5000 new vehicles from China to Australia for local customers, with Henderson saying Ford did similar bringing Ford Rangers and Everests from Thailand to Australia.

“We have already taken those actions (leasing boats to bring cars to Australia), to secure the logistics of the volume of cars we’re selling years ago. So there’s no new news about a boat of 5000 cars coming in – we do that every month, more than 5000 coming out of Thailand. We secured two ships that we have a long lease on to deliver that.”