15/12/2015
The 2015 model Ford Mustang is unloaded at Port Melbourne on December 2nd, 2015. THE first Ford Mustang will be delivered to a Cairns’ enthusiast early in the new year. Trinity Ford general manager Richard Jaska said the buyer had “a decent collection of Mustangs and other vehicles”. He said he was in his 50s and his V8 coupe was due early to mid-January. Mr Jaska said the dealership had taken 50 orders for the pony car with all but one a V8. “Seventy per cent are fastback/coupes. We are out to 2017 deliveries,” he said. The first shipment of cars arrived in Melbourne two weeks ago. But the 170-plus made-in-the-US Mustangs will go only so far in filling a backlog of 4000 orders piled up since the car was revealed two years ago. The Michigan factory began right-hand-drive production in September, making the Mustang a world car for the first time since its mid-1960s debut. But prices have risen with Ford blaming US currency pressure and “market demand” for the $2500 price rise on its hero car that is sold out for a year. It has risen by $1000 for the turbo four model and $2500 for the V8 after the first year’s allocation – 4000 cars – sold out before arriving in showrooms or anyone had taken a test drive. The Mustang range now starts from $50,120 drive away in Cairns for the four-cylinder turbo and $62,729 for the V8 manual. Ford says it will honour the original price for anyone who placed an order for a new Mustang before November 30. But if you order a new Mustang today, you will not only pay up to $2500 more for it, you will also need to wait until 2017 before taking delivery. Ford Australia CEO Graeme Whickman said “nobody is getting gouged or anything like that, we’ve protected anyone who placed an order by the end of November.” He said strong customer demand and currency pressure contributed to the price rises. “It’s a mixture of all manner of business conditions, so yes there’s currency (pressure) but at the same time we have to understand what the demand is. We have to make a return. “We monitor (pricing) on all vehicles on a monthly basis. Demand and supply are always factors in pricing, that’s the nature of pricing. “At the end of the day, when you reflect on 4000 orders, that’s a pretty big order bank.” The Mustang is half the price it used to be in Australia in the early 2000s – when a handful of cars were converted from left-hand-drive to right-hand-drive locally – but local buyers still pay up to $20,000 more per vehicle than they do in the US, even once equipment changes have been taken into account. “I think it represents pretty good value,” said Mr Whickman. “It’s still got to get here, it’s got to go through a few hoops, it’s got to get fumigated, it’s got to through the Panama Canal, it’s still got to get on a ship.” Mr Whickman said the fall of the Aussie dollar versus the US currency “is a bit of a challenge and the same time we have to recoup costs”.