Ford's confidence that it can sell decent numbers of the Mondeo-based Edge large SUV in Europe might be misplaced. A near-production concept of the next-generation Edge, which was revealed at the Los Angeles auto show last month, gives a strong hint as to the final vehicle Europe is going to see by 2017 -- and it certainly looks good.

But the fact is that large SUVs from mass-producers such as Ford do not sell well in Europe. Last year, sales of large SUVs fell 28 percent to 23,283 in a European market of 12.5 million, according to figures from JATO Dynamics.

By contrast sales in the medium SUV sector, where the Ford Kuga competes, rose 15 percent to 672,930 in Europe last year.