China launch of New Fiesta delayed to early 2009

Shanghai, October 28 (Gasgoo.com) Chinese customers have been eagerly waiting for the launch of the locally made new Ford Fiesta after the 2009 Ford Focus made by Changan Ford Mazda hit the Chinese market on September 25. According to a sales executive of the joint venture, the new Ford Fiesta will hit the China market in early 2009, said xinhuanet.com today.

An industry analyst said that it is due to the current market slump that Changan Ford Mazda has decided to delay the launch of the long-awaited new compact sedan Ford Fiesta from late 2008 to early 2009. It is believed that a year-end release of new car models can lend little or no boost to their sales, because most of the newly launched models have been marked down soon after they went to the market.

In the French market, Europe Ford has recently announced the price of its new Fiesta models, which will sell for an equivalent of 120,000 ($17,570) to 140,000 yuan. The Chinese made new Ford Fiesta is expected to be available to local buyers at a lower price as of early next year. Its Chinese production was reported to begin in late 2008 at Changan Ford Mazda Auto's plant in Nanjing.

Affected by China's auto market slowdown, the sales of Changan Ford Mazda in 2008 hold little hope for optimism. In the first nine months, the joint venture saw its sales grow by a meager 6%, far the 58% as expected at the beginning of the year when the company set the yearly sales target at 192,000 units - a target that now seems an impossible mission.

One of the urgent problems for Changan Ford Masda to address and solve is how to make a breakthrough in the sluggish market segment of compact sedans by promoting its China-made but late-launched new Ford Fiesta as a heavyweight model.