So remember when legacy automaker Ford’s (F) CEO, Jim Farley, was spending all that time tooling around in—and publicly praising—a Chinese electric vehicle? A lot of people thought something was amiss there, but now, there may have been a method to the madness all along. Ford may have a way to beat Chinese EV technology, and Ford stock gained modestly with the news in Monday afternoon’s trading.
Farley’s master plan, reports note, involves making smaller vehicles overall, which in turn will send prices on a downward slope as well. Which makes sense; smaller vehicles take less material, which means lower cost, so lower price kind of has to follow unless you just suddenly jack up your profit margins.
Yet this also proves somewhat controversial. Ford has been making bigger cars for years, and people have been buying them to the point where Ford largely does not make a car any more that is not named after a horse. Ford pickups and SUVs, particularly in gasoline engines, are a major part of Ford’s sales figures, so Ford planning to downsize something other than employees or manager bonuses is something of a surprise.
And Speaking of Horses
The Mustang, about the last car Ford makes, is gaining even more ground as a police vehicle. In fact, North Carolina State Highway Patrol recently announced that it was releasing the Ford Mustang for “statewide patrol coverage” as a police cruiser. Ford Mustangs and the North Carolina Highway Patrol go back nearly 50 years, reports note, all the way back to the 1980s. This makes them something of a tradition, and vital to the DNA of the Highway Patrol.
While that tradition was briefly interrupted thanks to Hurricane Helene—from under which many North Carolina residents are still digging out—the practice is back in play, and the State Highway Patrol will be once again riding some new Mustangs.
Is Ford Stock a Good Buy Right Now?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Hold consensus rating on F stock based on four Buys, eight Holds and three Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 15.57% loss in its share price over the past year, the average F price target of $10.56 per share implies 12.76% upside potential.
