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Ford to kick off F-150 campaign during College Football Playoff

The long-awaited inaugural College Football Playoff will feature the nation's best college teams, with the Oregon Ducks taking on the Florida State Seminoles, and Alabama Crimson Tide facing some team from Ohio. On top of that, though, it'll also see the launch of the very first advertising campaign for the 2015 Ford F-150. Viewers from across the country will see a trio of ads featuring the all-aluminum truck, with two half-minute spots and a full 60-second commercial, all voiced by Denis Leary, touting the F-150's feature set and towing capacity, but passing on mentioning the new truck's class-leading fuel economy. That, Automotive News reports, isn't a miscue by Ford. The company simply didn't have enough time between the EPA's fuel economy announcement and the 2014-2015 Bowl Season to prepare a spot. Expect plenty on the F-150's fuel efficiency in future spots. Interestingly, though, AN is reporting future F-150 advertising won't include a Super Bowl appearance. Ford has made the decision to focus its new truck ads on college football rather than during the NFL championship. "From our point of view, there's no bigger stage to debut the F-150 creative than the College Football Playoff," Keith Koeppen, Ford's US marketing communications boss, told AN. "It's so closely aligned with the passions of our customer." It's those passions that are pushing Ford to kick off its ad campaign for a new truck so much earlier. Speaking to AN, Doug Scott, Ford's truck marketing manager, said that the automaker typically doesn't begin ad campaigns until its dealers have at least a fifty-fifty mix of old and new models, but that it's pushing the 2015 F-150's ads to fit with the college football playoffs. While Ford's focus is on the two semifinal playoff games on New Year's Day and the National Championship Game on January 12, the ads will actually air for the first time on New Year's Eve, when the TCU Horned Frogs face off against the Ole Miss Rebels in the Peach Bowl. The three spots will also be shown during other bowl games, as well. Featured Gallery 2015 Ford F-150 2.7L EcoBoost at Davis Dam News Source: Automotive News - sub. req.Image Credit: Ford Marketing/Advertising Ford Truck ncaa

Dealers price gouging Ford Mustang 50th Anniversary Edition by up to $20k [UPDATE]

UPDATE: Sheehy Ford's Cory Belcher got back to us, confirming that the price premium was related to the limited nature of the 50th Anniversary Mustang and that the figure listed was based on what other dealers were charging, while adding that the dealership was "very flexible" on the final price of the special edition car. So while there remains a hefty markup, it's possible that consumers could get out the door without spending quite so much over MSRP. It's no secret that dealers take some – let's call them "liberties" – with the prices on vehicles that are very new, highly in demand or available in very limited numbers. As we've explained before, they're well within their rights to charge so-called market value adjustments. We don't usually see these adjustments on mainstream vehicles, though. Then again, you could argue that the 2015 Ford Mustang 50th Anniversary Edition is not necessarily a mainstream vehicle. It starts at $46,170, which isn't peanuts, but it's still a Mustang. There's still a large portion of the buying public that could put one in their driveway, if they so chose. Then again, maybe they can't. That's because dealers are (still) issuing massive premiums on top of MSRP for the limited-edition model. It's happening at Sheehy Ford Gaithersburg, where a salesperson named Lou confirmed to Autoblog that the dealership is charging around $20,000 over MSRP on not one, but two Anniversary Editions. He explained that Sheehy isn't alone in the upcharge: "We like to see what other dealers are asking for," he told us, in reference to the limited edition 'Stang. We have a message in for the dealership's general manager for deeper info, too, and will update this post when/if we hear back. We corroborated Lou's story, though, with another Maryland area dealer, Century Ford, who confirmed that the $46,995 listed on the dealer's website for its Wimbledon White Anniversary car was incorrect, and the actual price was "around $64,000." He echoed Lou's reasoning for the upcharge, while adding that dealers are likely only going to see one or two examples, of the 1,964 produced. Perhaps the most worrying part of this entire affair is the sense of deceit that accompanies it. Neither of the dealers we spoke to copped to the market value adjustments on their website. We had to call and ask specifically about the cars in question to get the actual price.

Ford Fiesta 1.0L EcoBoost sales robust in early going

Okay, okay, okay, so I was just a smidge wrong. Those that read my review of the Ford Fiesta with the new 1.0-liter, EcoBoost engine will know that while I really enjoyed the torquey little three-cylinder, I was concerned that Ford's decision to force 1.0-liter owners into a manual transmission, steel wheels and one trim level might hurt sales of the new engine. I was also concerned that the promised 45-mile-per-gallon highway rating wouldn't be enough to tempt buyers into trying an engine that's so far outside of what the general public is use to. My concerns, though, seem to have been for naught.
While not doing a booming business on the triple-equipped Fiesta, Ford is seeing a take rate of four to eight percent per month in the engine's first few months on sale. Now, four to eight percent might not sound like a lot - if, like last year, the Fiesta sells around 71,000 units, there'd be barely 5,600 1.0-liter models on the road. It is also small potatoes relative to the take rate on EcoBoost-equipped vehicles across the Ford range, which US sales analyst Erich Merkle estimates to be roughly 35 to 40 percent of retail sales. Still, according to The Detroit News, the 1.0-liter is getting adopted at roughly the same rate as the sparkling Fiesta ST, which should be a solid indication of just how well this little engine is doing.
The 1.0-liter's success "really speaks volumes, not just to what we're doing with the Fiesta, but with EcoBoost in general," Merkle told Autoblog.