Ford justifies its Vignale sub-brand (video)

Ford has released a video justifying its decision to badge-engineer its cars with the Vignale sub-brand to create an upmarket offering.

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Earlier this month, as the Frankfurt Motor Show approached, Ford revealed that it’s going back to a sales tactic they created in the 1970s – badge-engineering their cars with a coachbuilders name to create an upmarket sub-brand.

Last time Ford played this game we had almost 30 years for the Ford Ghia, a range of Ford’s mainstream models that had all the toys as standard to try and create an appealing high-end option for buyers.

This time Ford are using another name they gobbled up on a spending spree – Vignale, another Turin Coachbuilders – to badge up their top-end offerings.

Ford’s rationale – discussed in the video below – is that premium car makers are encroaching on Ford’s territory as they push in to smaller and smaller cars, and Ford believe the best way to counter that is to move their offerings upmarket.

So they plan to offer the Vignale ‘range’ (expected to head up all Ford’s range of cars) with lots of luxuries, from cosmetic bodywork to fancy leather and high-end technology in a bid to grab a piece of the market that’s opting for a car from the bottom end of premium makers’ ranges.

But does that make sense? Isn’t a car like the Ford Mondeo already every bit as good in many ways – and cheaper and better equipped too – than the bottom end 3-Series? Aren’t car buyers buying the ‘badge’, not the toys, when they opt for a 3-Series or C-Class instead of a Mondeo?

We’ve no doubt Ford will sell cars with the Vignale badge successfully, but we somehow doubt they’ll manage to take sales away from the bottom end of the premium car makers range.

Let us know what you think in the comments.