Ford ends production of sedans and crossovers, pivots to trucks, SUVs, sports cars

Ford’s cheapest new vehicle now starts at nearly $30,000

Ford Motor has stopped producing the Taurus, Focus, and Escape — once staple sedans and crossovers that generated hundreds of thousands of annual sales — and now offers only pickup trucks, SUVs, and the Mustang sports car. The company’s U.S. sales in 2025 reached their highest level in six years, but Ford sold about 400,000 fewer vehicles than it did a decade earlier, and its total market share has shrunk as customers have fewer entry-level options.

The shift is a deliberate strategy championed by Chief Executive Jim Farley, who has described the company’s former sedans, hatchbacks, and minivans as “boring” and said he wants to make Ford the “Porsche of off-road.” In a call with analysts this week, Farley said the company is “ruthless about where we put our money” and that “every dollar must earn durable returns and drive profitable growth.”

Ford’s cheapest new vehicle is the Maverick compact pickup, which starts at roughly $28,000, followed by the Bronco Sport SUV at about $32,000. A decade ago, Ford offered several models in the $20,000 range, with some below $15,000. The company’s average new-vehicle price now hovers near $50,000, reflecting the industrywide shift toward larger, more expensive trucks and SUVs.

The company’s decision to exit the sedan and crossover segments dates to 2018, when then-CEO Jim Hackett cut cars from Ford’s lineup except for the Mustang, a move that met resistance from engineers and designers, according to people familiar with the discussions. The Escape, a crossover SUV that once started around $28,000, ended production in 2025, and only a few thousand unsold Escapes remain on dealer lots. The former Escape factory is now being retooled to build a $30,000 all-electric pickup truck designed to compete with Chinese EV makers and Tesla.

Andrew Frick, president of Ford’s electric- and gas-vehicle divisions, said the company’s strategy is necessary for long-term viability. “If I had to grade us in the years past, in the affordable space, we were average at both, and therefore it wasn’t a sustainable winning proposition,” Frick said in an interview. He said Ford’s generic vehicles like the Focus and Escape required the company to spend more on incentives and promotions, and sometimes forced price cuts that “hurts the overall viability of the product line.”

Ford plans to launch five new models priced below $40,000 by the end of the decade, but executives acknowledge the challenge of building affordable cars profitably in the U.S. under current tariffs and labor costs. Most budget-friendly cars sold in the U.S. today are built overseas; rival General Motors, for example, sells two small SUVs priced below $25,000 that are assembled in South Korea.

Some dealers have expressed reservations about the narrowed lineup. “It’s definitely a complete shift to everything that most dealers I know believe, which is, the more products you have, the more product you can sell,” said Shane Collins, executive general manager at a Ford dealer in Louisville, Ky. Phil Maguire, an upstate New York dealer with three Ford stores, said he is cautiously optimistic. “Hopefully it will retain the ability to be that brand, and specialize in some more iconic pieces,” Maguire said.

Matt Simpson, head of Ford’s customization division, said roughly half of Ford’s customers are personalizing their vehicles with add-ons such as cargo boxes and decals, a higher rate than at other automakers. The company now designs vehicles with customization in mind from the start, allowing dealers to sell packages at the point of sale. “This is the most passionate lineup that Ford has ever had,” Simpson said.

For some longtime Ford owners, the shift has forced difficult choices. Ken Hall, 66, who has owned Fords for decades — including a Thunderbird, a Taurus, and most recently an Edge SUV that was discontinued in 2024 — said he and his wife “reluctantly” traded their Edge for a larger Explorer after moving to downtown Detroit. On the first drive, Hall said he paused and thought: “What did we just do? This seems pretty big.”

Industry analysts have noted the risks of Ford’s bet on high-margin vehicles and on a new electric pickup. Dan Levy, a Barclays auto analyst, called the EV pickup “a really big bet on their part” at a time when the broader market has soured on electric cars. Frick said he understands the reservations, because no company has “really broken out in the market to have a standout” EV outside of Tesla. “Our expectation is to compete not with some of the, you know, average EV players, but with the Teslas of the world,” he said.