Cadillac Escalade to Get Crossover Sibling? Mercury to Go Away?
Big changes are brewing this morning at two of Detroit's finest automakers, and though both companies claim to be headed for the same destination'”Profitability City'”the moves show they're taking two different roads to get there. For General Motors, the route seems to be a familiar one: Already seeing success by building the Chevrolet Traverse, GMC Acadia and Buick Enclave off the same platform, the General is now reported to be working on a Cadillac version. Ford meanwhile is looking to streamline its lineup by perhaps finally biting the bullet and using a few of said projectiles to put Mercury out of its misery.
For Cadillac, GM certainly figures that if three successful big crossovers are good, then four must be better. And so far, the current three have been pretty good. Through the first third of the year, Enclave sales are running more than 30 percent above 2009 numbers, the Traverse is up 11 percent and the Acadia is leading the pack, about 33 percent ahead of last year's pace. Together, they've been responsible for about 70,000 GM sales through April.
But here's the problem. One of the biggest criticisms of the pre-meltdown GM had to do with a penchant for badge engineering: Taking the same basic vehicle, making a few minor cosmetic changes, and then trying to sell it as different models for all of its different divisions. Admittedly, it's a fine line between badge engineering and platform sharing, in which different vehicles share the same mechanical bits under the skin, but GM was too often on the wrong side of that line.
With the big crossovers, GM is practically straddling it. The Enclave and the Acadia are clearly different vehicles, as are the Enclave and the Traverse. But when you put the Traverse and the Acadia together, you can see, especially in their profiles, a certain family resemblance. The two don't look nearly as similar as the Acadia and the dearly departed Saturn Outlook did, but you start noticing how there are just so many ways to wrap a seven-seat crossover when you're on a limited budget.
The difference, though, in doing a Cadillac version is that Cadillac already has a striking, unmistakably identifiable design language that would provide a simple template for a big crossover. I'm not saying it's just a matter of hammering all of the Enclave's curves into Cadillac-style sharp angles and planes, but that would be the basic idea.
As for any competition between a crossover and the Escalade itself, the key differentiator would be the latter's "real truck" body-on-frame construction. There obviously remains a market for these vehicles, and the current Escalade remains one of its leaders. In April, for example, the Escalade proper tallied 1,250 sales, while the extended version, the Escalade ESV, chipped in another 600 or so sales, and the open-bed Escalade EXT was good for about 150. That compares to luxury body-on-frame competitors like the Infiniti QX and Lexus LX, which sold 675 and 258 units, respectively, last month.
A crossover Cadillac would likely cannibalize some of those sales, but it wouldn't be able to offer a similar up-sized model, nor a pickup-like version. Further, any customers the "regular" Escalade loses to the crossover could be gained back by attracting buyers from other automakers that are moving out of body-on-frame segments.
Now, as long as we're on the topics of badge engineering and companies that are dropping body-on-frame SUVs, let's take a peek at Mercury. The once-storied brand is an example of badge engineering at its worse. The Mercury Milan, Mercury Mariner, Mercury Mountaineer and Mercury Grand Marquis have devolved into (very) thinly veiled versions of the Ford Fusion, Ford Escape, Ford Explorer and Ford Crown Victoria.
It's true that, all things considered, the division is doing surprisingly well so far in 2010, with sales results up about 20 percent on the year. That's better than the industry as a whole, and it also happens to be slightly better than the Blue Oval's other division, Lincoln.
But whereas the Lincoln lineup has received two new products that are well differentiated from their Ford donors, the Lincoln MKS and Lincoln MKT, Mercury is about to lose two products, with no replacements in sight. The body-on-frame Mountaineer is getting the axe as the Explorer becomes a crossover, and the decades-old Grand Marquis, along with the Crown Vic, have simply reached the end of their road
Another problem for Mercury is that Ford-division products have gone so far upscale. Mercury used to be sort of the Blue Oval's Buick, a nameplate that fit between the mass-market Ford and the luxury of Lincoln. But today's Fords already offer the kind of premium experience Mercury used to deliver. I mean, what would be the point of a Mercury version of the Ford Flex with Ford itself offering the new and very up-level Titanium version?
The end result here is that, according to a story first reported by Bloomberg, a plan to shutter Mercury could be in place by as soon as July.
Most auto observers would say that makes sense, and it doesn't seem as if the decision would cause too much of a ruckus among customers. After all, a quote in the Bloomberg story from auto analyst John Wolkonwicz pretty much tells the story: "Many Americans probably already think it has been discontinued."