Exactly one month after I saw a herd of Deere sailing down the river, another load coming from Germany caught my eye. The upper deck of the Fuerte RoRo-ship was laden with Ford Fiestas, built in Cologne.
The MS Fuerte can transport up to 500 cars. It’s also used to ship tractors (obviously) and buses.
Here’s where the little Fords are coming from, the Ford plant in Cologne (alternative spelling: Ford Werke Köln), situated at the river Rhine. All Fiestas for the European market are Cologne built.
The production of the current Fiesta generation started in May 2017. Pictured the Vignale, best described as the plush Ghia trim level of yore.
In 2018, the Ford Fiesta was the number 4 on the EU + EFTA sales chart. It’s also Ford’s only model in the Top 10, let’s have a look at the full list:
- Volkswagen Golf – 445,754
- Renault Clio – 336,268
- Volkswagen Polo – 299,920
- Ford Fiesta – 270,738
- Nissan Qashqai – 233,026
- Peugeot 208 – 230,049
- Volkswagen Tiguan – 224,788
- Skoda Octavia – 223,352
- Toyota Yaris – 217,642
- Opel/Vauxhall Corsa – 217,036
(Source: Jato Dynamics)
The Fiesta’s career started in 1976 and the party is still going on, certainly if 200 horses join in.
Mmmm, great stuff!! This post made me jump onto Youtube to see the path of the Rhine from Cologne to the sea. I guess this ship stops in Rotterdam? My Father was born in Koblenz to English parents in the 20’s, further upstream from Cologne. Thanks Johannes for sparking some great conversations here.
Great! Basically, shortly after the Rhine rolls into my country, it splits into three Dutch rivers: the IJssel (to the north), the Nederrijn and the Waal (both to the west).
The ship was sailing down the Waal, about 20 km west of Nijmegen.
Will visit the Skoda plant north of Prague in two weeks. Hope to see an Octavia (#8 on the above list) assembled. Not sure if these are shipped by rail or water. Will pose the question to the guide during the tour.
Skoda sold 701,670 cars in the EU last year. Just some other numbers, to put things in perspective:
Ford – 974,856
Fiat – 701,892
Toyota – 686,267
The undisputed number one: Volkswagen – 1,698,084
Got my education of the VW empire while visiting AutoStadt in Wolfsburg. Based on the above numbers plus SEAT, VW must be the king of the hill in Europe.
Now I understand why FCA was shopping around for a partner several years ago and GM Europe was sold to Peugeot.
Must be a brutal market!!
VAG-Group – 3,611,948 cars – marketshare 23.8%.
The runner up, sort of, is the PSA Group (so Opel/Vauxhall included) with 2,459,841 cars sold in 2018 and an EU-marketshare of 16.2%.
There are around 20 C-segment (“Golf-class”) hatchbacks, as in brands, to choose from. Not to mention that many of them are available as a wagon too. Quite brutal indeed!
Enjoy your trip!
They are making circa 1350 cars a day in this plant. Production time is around 4hours and with the test drive each car require to pass, it’s making about 6 hour a total. The line is quite impressive, producing different models, level of equipment and even LHD/RHD just by one by one as they come. I was there last year.
Finished cars are going out by rail and the trucks which are the king.
EU total sales were about 10% less than the US total sales in 2018, IIRC.
It has to impress (and surprise) some on here that the VW Golf in the EU sold more units with 445,000 than ANY passenger car sold here last year (basically any vehicle besides the big 3 trucks), even the RAV4 which was in 4th place here is outsold by the Golf over there.
If you added 10% to everything over there to make the total sales even with the US, then the Golf would be quite close to selling as many as the RAM pickup does/did over here.
The Golf is, and has always been, the F-150 of Europe and especially in Germany. The Golf is practically mythical. When I told my German friends I had recently purchased a Golf, they were in unison approval. It is the only classless car in horridly snobbish Germany.
VW has huge volume and it can afford to make a decent, or better than average, car for the money. It had better not annoy the German public again on its corporate practices, which is the reason they are going green so quickly.
There will always be a Golf.
The Golf is the real New Beetle. Since 1974, it has been the benchmark for anything that wants to call itself a compact hatchback. BTW, it’s a classless car everywhere, not only in “horridly snobbish” Germany.
Looking at that list of almost all small cars, I have to conclude that Europeans are living lives of deprivation. Most of them probably dream of owning an F150 or Ram. Yet they must accept the likes of a Golf. It must be very distressing to them knowing that they are driving inferior vehicles.
No, they don’t, or not the Europeans I know. You see, not everyone is the same as you. I could buy a Ram or F-150 but where I live, it doesn’t make any sense. The parking is too difficult, spaces too narrow and running costs absurd.
A Golf inferior? Go get a RAM and drive it for five years. Then try to keep in going another five.
Previously I stated on this site that if the United States vehicle fleet mirrored the European, we would be emitting about a half a billion tons less CO2 a year. Considering the consequences we face as a result of the special needs of the populace, we should be asking ourselves why we are so different?
The Golf? If there was a Golf with a hybrid system as good as that which Toyota puts into their cars, it would be the obvious choice for me.
I doubt that the Golf would be any easier to keep running after the five-year mark. Plus, it would be more expensive to repair than the RAM.
No mate, we don’t. We look a across the pond with bemusement, knowing that very little of what we do to slow climate change matters while you lot are there. I would hate to have to drive an American car here – too big, too wasteful, too gauche.
I do not think the opinion is so radically green as you present. I would say who can afford to pay the higher taxes or simply the us product suits his needs the best, then use the American car.
But average Joe needs his repair shop behind the corner, not to stand out of the crowd or opposite, drives the same the crowd not to stand out. Sure, the size were always factor to fit our streets, but you really think the full size European cars are that much smaller? Or more fuel efficient when the owner wants some serious power? Like v8 range rover?
To sacrifice whats mentioned above it needs a car that really stands out of the local production = muscle cars, pickups or SUV. The Chevy Impala or any other common car makes not sense because European cars get so much better compare to 15-20years ago for our specific needs.
Regarding the pollution, California were a leader for many years in strict emmisions. Look at whats on the road in the India for example…
I don’t think it’s particularly radical to say ‘Americans generate several times the emissions of a Yurpean’; it’s pretty well-evidenced (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?view=chart). Even with California, Texas is still a thing 😉
And of course there are exceptions who want daft giant things over here, it’s just that they’re considered douchebags by many people (n=1 on that survey, don’t ask about my p number). I’ve got a pretty fair salary and could fairly easily afford a pickup. It’s never gonna happen – I’d buy an MX-5 long before a Hilux. And if I needed to go off-road, a Jimny, because they’re cool.
Most European cities don’t have the extremes of climate that most American cities do. Try to live without air conditioning in most U.S. cities outside of Portland (Oregon), San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle. It won’t be pretty…
We were in Dallas a few years ago in August. We stopped at a small convenience store in the downtown area. A British tourist walked in after us. His first words were, “No wonder everything is air conditioned here.”
It makes me a little sad when I see the new generations of Focus and Fiesta, knowing we will not get them in the USA. My 2014 Fiesta Ecoboost (yep, the one with the 1.0L turbo 3-cylinder) has been great for 93,000 miles so far. I can see why the Fiesta is a sales hit in places where bigger does not equal better.
I certainly have not felt deprived driving this car; quite the opposite.
Ford Europe in short: the Fiesta, the Focus and the four Transit models
No one would shed a tear if the rest of their line-up gets the axe tomorrow.
I for one wish they’d make the original SportKa again. Great wee things, which they DEFINITELY didn’t approve these adverts for…
This ship brings back memories of a part-time job I had back in my college years (1969-72) at Baltimore’s Dundalk Marine Terminal, a major east coast port for foreign imports. I worked for a large car importer at the port, ferrying cars around the terminal (mostly VW Beetles, with an occasional Porsche and Audi), eventually loading them onto tri-level rail cars, where they were shipped throughout the country. The cars came to port in conventional freighters, unloaded one by one by cranes lifting them from the hold of the ship and setting them down dockside. It had been done this way forever, and took at least two days to unload a ship.
Then one day this huge ferry type ship with TOYOTA in big letters on the side came to port. Toyota’s were still fairly new to the U.S. at this time and I knew little about them. Two large doors swung down and Toyota’s started rolling out, in far more numbers than a traditional freighter held. A few hours later the ship was empty and on its way, undoubtedly saving a bundle in labor and port costs. Pretty ingenious I thought. Little did I know then how truly ingenious this little known upstart was and what it would become.
As always interesting post Johannes. it intrigues me to know that the top US model is the F150, top European model the Golf, and the top Japanese model the Honda N-Box…
Each perhaps well suited to their respective environments… Jim.
Thanks Jim. Note that panel vans and (pickup) trucks are registered as light commercial vehicles, you won’t find them on the sales chart of (passenger) cars.
The Fiesta is on it’s way to being a Europe only model.
Production in Mexico for North America has ended.
Production in Brazil for South American is ending. The plant where it and heavy trucks were built is being closed.
Production in China ended in 2012
Production in Russia is ending as Ford has announced it is closing Russian passenger car operations.
The Rumor mill says Ford is in negotiations to sell a controlling interest in it’s Indian operations to Mahindra. It would be reasonable to expect all future Ford products in that country to be Mahindra based.
For that matter, the Focus is becoming a Europe/China only product, with production ending in the US, Argentina and Russia.
The Rhine is a very important river. I used to cycle along it to work (about 14 km a day, each way). I´d see barges with the captain´s car parked on the upper deck and also see the pleasure cruisers which go as far as Basel. And during the spring and autumn birds follow the river up- and downstream. A typical German river scene is of forests, water and a church spire on the bend in the river.
If you have the opportunity, can I recommend you try biking from Cologne upstream to Basel? It takes about five days of easy, level riding. I have done parts of the route and it´s a delight.
(If anyone is interested I have several chapters of a book on bike trips in Germany
written! Publishers, queue here, please.)