Looks like a quarter million dollars and 1.5 million recalls according to the article. All in all Ford probably came out ahead from a dollar perspective. What they lost was reputation. Compact Fords would sell poorly until they were completely discontinued decades later.
Escorts sold fairly well compared to the Chrysler/GM competition IIRC (And that's speaking as a very happy former Saturn owner)[1]
Frankly, I'd blame Ford's discontinuation of compacts in the US more on their cognitive dissonance around the PowerShift than anything else.
People knew it was junk as far back as 2016. Rather than fix it, they stuck with their lie and tried to use the EcoSport as a nonsensical distraction.
To then cite 'declining sales' is IMO dishonest. OFC the sales declined, both you and the consumer knew the product was faulty.
It's worth stating that Saturn is the only brand I ever really really trusted, one of their techs warned me about the ignition switch issue 4+ years before it came to light.
[1] - I should also add, when Ford gets it right they get it right. I have a Maverick Hybrid and it is the perfect apology for the last A/T Focus, if only they could produce in reasonable numbers.
Someone from Ford and/or Getrag ought to have gone to jail for that shit. A car with an automatic that suddenly has a transmission full of neutrals in the middle of an intersection is a serious safety hazard!
No. Ford Tempo was a best selling car between 1984 - 1994:
“The Tempo was a sales success for Ford, staying one of the top ten best selling cars in the US, if not one of the top five, during its entire production run.”
Wikipedia also has production counts, and it’s more than 2.8 million.
