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Ford has confirmed that around half of early sales for its new prestige Vignale brand are conquest customers to the brand.
Vignale launches with a higher-specced and leather-trimmed version of the Mondeo, with the S-max Vignale coming around a year from now, to be followed by at least two other models to be revealed in March. Ford's UK boss Andy Barratt said that a 50% conquest rate included a "high abundance of German premium brands".
"We'll let natural demand take shape. We're only building sold orders and it will be as organic as we can make it," he told BusinessCar, discussing moves that includes not even putting the Vignale on Ford's internal company car list to avoid supplying the market with used models. "We will carefully manage how we take the brand to market and it will be demand pull," he said. Ford is predicting 1500-2000 Mondeo Vignale registrations as part of a 20,000 Mondeo total in 2016.
"We will stand back and see on numbers. We know it will be slow business so there is no rush to market," Ford's UK sales director Kevin Griffin told BusinessCar. "It's a mix of Mondeo volume so there is no specific target; the consumer will decide for us and it will be slow-burn."
Barrett denied that Vignale is too much of a move upmarket for Ford. "It's a price point we've been selling Mondeo at for many years with the Titanium X Sport," he said. "It's something we've been very familiar with, and what we're getting is conquest and loyalists move in and step up."
With the previous Mondeo, 60% of registrations were Titanium level or above, which has spurred the company into making a more premium model, "User-choosers get a barrier of what to spend - they can get more [with Vignale] and it fits in neatly above Titanium X," said a Ford spokesman.
The SME market is the target from a corporate perspective, especially those smaller fleets where the managers choose their own vehicle, as those customers are more likely to appreciate the benefit of the dedicated Vignale area of Ford's showrooms, and business class-style check-in for service and repair work.
"Some SMEs are sensitive to the image they are portraying and don't want to be driving a premium brand," added Ford's large car product manager Paul Baynes. "We're not deliberately going head-to-head with premium brands, but we hope it will appeal to [SMEs]."
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