Though it just reached a notable milestone – 100 years since it was founded – Ford Australia hasn’t always been a huge success. In fact, last year, Ford CEO Jim Farley admitted that the company nearly pulled out of that country at some point, which isn’t terribly surprising given its prior struggles there – and it hasn’t been the only automaker facing a difficult go in Australia, either. However, Ford Australia has since turned things around in a big way, and The Blue Oval’s Executive Chairman, Bill Ford, recently touched on the big role that its development team serves, too.
“I don’t see why not,” Bill Ford stated when asked if the current level of engineering and design capability would be maintained in Australia, according to CarSales. “We just launched the [Ranger] Super Duty as you know and that’s amazing and there will be lots more to come for Australia. One great thing about this team here is they have risen to every challenge they have ever had and they continue to knock it out of the park and I expect they will do so in the future.”
“Look, we have so much opportunity in front of us and we have made Australia a center of excellence for Ford. They have done a great job; just look at the sales results for Ranger and Everest. I think Ranger now is sold in 180 different countries, which is incredible. This is a great team here and they will have opportunity in the future.”
The debut of the all-new Ford Ranger Super Duty is just the latest addition to the automaker’s ever-growing Australian lineup – not to mention an expansion of variants revolving around its best-selling model in that country, too. The Ranger’s success in Australia helped the automaker sell over 100k vehicles there in 2024, in fact, a mark it hadn’t previously reached since 2008.
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That’s why it makes more sense if a performance sedan is in development it should be a Falcon, and it should be developed by Australia’s team like the Ranger Raptor.
real world testing Australia and Baja California for realistic test can it survive