An article in USA Today says that Ford will move production of medium duty F-650 and F-750 trucks from Mexico to a suburban Cleveland plant in 2016. These trucks will replace the E-series vans that will be phased out after 2015. How about that?
Excellent news!
Sooooooo they were building their F-650 and F-750 trucks in Mexico? How many other of their vehicles are they building in Mexico? Why are they moving the production back to the U.S.? I’ll bet that altruism has absolutely nothing to do with the decision… and it should not. Alan Mulally has done a great job of running Ford like an actual business, focusing on design, manufacturing, and product rather than politics to make it profitable.
It’s great that Cleveland will get some jobs. But applauding Ford for it is, I believe, misguided. It’s purely a business decision.
The bigger question for me is how deep into the taxpayer pockets are they going to accomplish this…
Good question. I doubt if we’ll ever know the answer.
Wasn’t FOMOCO the only member of the “big three” that did not need a bailout?
Yup.
Ford did not get an emergency bailout but did get about 6 billion in loans from the Dept. of Energy.
Due to fuzzy bookkeeping it’s unknown if these loans will be paid back or whether or not it will be one of those pay back a dime on the dollar and we’re square type of loans.
Chrysler was said to be all square also; after the Feds wrote off a billion or so.
@the_same_mountainbike, I didn’t say why I applauded the news, just that it is happy news. I imagine that it was done because it makes good business sense and that is certainly very happy news. Especially when some places, like Australia, had the 3 remaining auto manufacturers there announce during a 4 month period that they would cease operations in the next 3 years.
Fair enough.
Congratulations to Cleveland. Attracting an automobile plant is an achievement.
I believe Ford didn’t need govenment money to survive because they had sold their soul the year or two before and borrowed and sold assets to the hilt to sieze as much cash as possible. They had enough money on hand to make it through the downturn. Yeah he looked like a hero but at quite a price me thinks.
True, Bing. I seem to recall reading that they even entered into a sale/leaseback agreement with their corporate headquarters facility.
It was bigger than that. Ford used essentially all their assets as collateral to raise $25 billion in loans in 2006. That set them up with the bridge loans they needed to weather the 2008 financial meltdown. I’d say it was more luck than wisdom. But Ford executives, owners and creditors are pleased anyway. Btw, Ford was on board with the bridge loans that the government made to GM and Chrysler.
Yeah, I recall the situation. Alan Mulally has a track record with Boeing that suggests that much more than luck was involved in the Ford situation. The man is a living legend.
Ford makes hardnosed decisions. As any Brit; they have completely phased out car manufacturing in the UK, only vans are still made there. They also closed their plant in Antwerp, Belgium, moving most manufacturing to Cologne, Germany.
Manufacture of small cars for the North American market, always a losing proposition in the USA, has been permanently moved to Mexico; the Fiesta, Focus and Fusion are made there now.
Mazda as well will be making their small cars such as the Mazda2 and 3 in Mexico in a brand new plant. There is a good reason for this; in additon to NAFTA (covering the US, Canada and Mexico) Mexico has free trade agreements with 18 other countries and is a very good place to launch cars from. Mexico now builds more cars than Canada, the largest traditional source of US imports.
The Cadillac Escalade is made in Mexico- so much for making only small cars there.
Uh, they still build the F-650 and F-750 there.
Good for Cleveland! The rust belt certainly needs the good jobs.
The St. Louis metro area used to be second only to Detroit in auto production. Those days are long gone. Ford closed the Hazelwood plant years ago. Then the two side by side Chrysler plants in Fenton were shut down, one after the other, only a few years after a staggering amount of money was spent to modernize them. The GM plant in Wentzville almost went under; it was down to half a shift at one point. Now it is up to two full shifts. Where the Chrysler plants were is now just a huge expanse of empty ground. The two plants were torn down. Along with all the jobs lost with the close of the Ford and Chrysler plants, thousands more evaporated due to closure of suppliers and the ripple effect through the local economy. Last estimate I recall was upwards of 30,000 total jobs lost in the area in a decade’s time just due to the auto plant closures.
Quote from Docnick: "Manufacture of small cars for the North American market, always a losing proposition in the USA… Unquote.
False! The Chevrolet Sonic is made in Lake Orion, MI. People found a way to get it done.
Ford’s decision to make in the US could only be a purely a business decision that likely took in all factors that people involved could think of but the bottom line is to make money. That is why anyone one makes things for sale and why people go to work if making money needs to be justified. That could even include a patriotic factor from customers who might want their vehicle sourced from their home country.
@WhaWho Good point! I was going to say that GM was the only Big 3 who had the courage to try it. They had a ready-made plant and with the new wage structure it made sense on paper. Time will tell if the quality and costs are favorable enough. As part of the bailout, GM also had to promise to mximize US based production (Ford was exempted from that), the Sonic is a Korean GM car and could easily be imported from there as well.