20% of Ford dealers still call the Taurus, “Five Hundred”

20% of Ford dealers still call the Taurus, �Five Hundred�

We’ve always thought it was a stupid of Ford to rebadge the slow selling Five Hundred as the Ford Taurus and advertise that they were reviving an icon in American history. More like they were just rebadging a slow selling model with an icon name. Well surprise-surprise, sales of the model are still really sluggish.

However, the problem remains within the Ford dealerships. According to CNW Marketing Research, about twenty percent of Ford’s sales team is still calling the 2008 Ford Taurus a “Ford Five Hundred.” About 60 percent of the sales force is using the correct name, but still occasionally slips in the Five Hundred name.

Ford decided to kill the Five Hundred name and bring back the Taurus name during the Chicago Auto Show earlier this year. “We never should have walked away from the equity we had built up in the Taurus and Sable nameplate,” Mark Fields, president of Ford”s Americas unit, said in a speech at the Chicago auto show.

The Ford Taurus, or Five Hundred, starts at a suggest retail price (MSRP) of $23,996 for the 3.5-liter V-6 engine variant that produces 260 horsepower. The car is mated with a six-speed automatic transmission as the new Ford Edge.

 

Source: WindingRoad

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