DETROIT, July 31 (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co.'s massive Excursion sport utility vehicle, known as the largest and most gas-thirsty SUV on the market, may soon be heading for extinction.
Company spokesmen declined to comment on Wednesday on reports that the world's No. 2 automaker was pulling the plug on the Excursion, which won the immediate scorn of environmental groups when it made its debut in 1999.
But a source with knowledge of the situation said Ford was likely to stop producing the mammoth vehicle, which is nearly 19-feet (5.8 metres) long and seats nine, after the 2004 model year.
The Excursion was originally built to compete with General Motor Corp.'s Chevrolet Suburban full-size SUV and Ford had high hopes for the vehicle, which yielded one of its highest profit margins.
Excursion sales in the United States, the main market for the vehicle, were down about 16 percent in the first half of this year compared with the same period a year earlier, however.
And a company source said on Wednesday that Ford sees the full-size SUV segment, which accounted for about 5 percent of all U.S. car and truck sales last year, shrinking going forward.
"The demographics are moving away from the segment," said the source, who noted that aging baby-boomers are now moving in growing numbers toward retirement or the "empty-nest" stage of their lives.
Perhaps more importantly, the Excursion, which can weigh in at nearly 7,700 pounds (3,492 kg) depending on the model, only gets about 10 miles (16 km) per gallon.
Eliminating it would help enormously if Ford is to make good on the pledge it made two years ago, when it first promised to raise the average fuel economy of its hot-selling SUVs in the United States by 25 percent by 2005.
Ford Chairman and Chief Executive Bill Clay Ford Jr., an avid environmentalist and great-grandson of automotive pioneer Henry Ford, has made improving the company's environmental record a top priority.