RichardJensen

Yep. My grandfather (from Saginaw, Michigan) used to say "we must be in South Dakota, the wind just picked up" whenever he came out to visit us. Of course we explain it thus: It's always windy here because Minnesota sucks & Wyoming blows.

That would kind of stand to reason, though. Wouldn't it? I mean the greatest load on the engine is going to be launching from a dead stop, and you'd expect a diesel to have a lot more torque right off idle than a conventional gas engine. I'd guess you could match the 5th wheel capability w/one or two extra low gears.

350 hp in an E-Series. Three hundred and fifty horsepower in an E-Series. (Insert appropriate 'back in my day' quote about 1980s engines.)

I think bzcat was just saying that the MME would be built at a VW plant. As it's also going to be sold stateside, and is already under development, it's not going to use a VW architecture.

Curious, then, that Ford's been the engineering lead on the past two JV RWD transmissions.

I tend to think they'll offer a smaller displacement engine for a very simple reason: The incremental cost of building a smaller displacement engine will be more than made up for by the premium that they'll charge to upgrade to the 7.3. Having a smaller engine gives them a means of raising the ATP.

The 7.3 block almost certainly supports lower displacements, so I would expect the 6.2L to be replaced with a similar displacement derived from the 7.3

Interesting. Around here they have a saying: "He's a Ph.D …. Poppa had a Dealership."

I dunno. I think Ford's rationale for the F-600 makes a lot of sense: Form factor. I think the new Chevy MDs have the same issue that the last GM MDs had: The truck is just too big, physically, for lighter duty applications. From that standpoint, I think Ford's going in the opposite direction: They've beefed up a F-550, which has more of a conventional pickup cab/engine compartment/frame, so you get 22k GVWR from a pickup, basically.

Yep. I didn't have to paint the GT90 or the GT40 Mark II. The rest had to be painted. I brush painted the '60 Starliner---with acrylic paint. I do *not* want to do that again. The '60 Starliner came with a second engine that was crazy detailed. It had the valve springs & studs molded into the heads, so I painted it up and put it together without gluing the valve cover or air cleaner on. I think it's the first engine I've assembled that had a fuel line & fuel pump.

BTW: Last summer I decided it would be fun to get back into building model cars... And a few weeks after I started I realized that I'm about the same age my dad was when he started to build model cars again. Of course he had four kids at the time, including one (ahem) who was fascinated by it. I've done these models, as well as converting a '69 Torino into a '68 (my dad's first car), and a '71 Plymouth Duster for my father-in-law. I'm trying to put together a "Ford GT" Series: I've got the Mark II and the GT40 that won at LeMans in '68 and '69, as well as the Mark IV (finding that model was not easy). I've also done the GT90 (which is my favorite concept car ever), and next up are the 2005 GT & the 2017 GT. The 1:43 GT40 was fun. It's incredibly detailed considering the size. I'm working on an '84 SVO and a '55 Continental Mark II right now. At some point I'll probably do a Datsun 280Z, since I thought those things were really cool when I was a kid.

Holy crap. He's back.

I'm curious how Ford's MD sales break down---how many are sales to new vs. existing customers, how many are sold via bidding process, and to what extent Ford is interested in chasing individual sales. I mean, it's obvious on the retail side that Ford is going to spend millions in order to sell cars one at a time to individual households, but what's their budget to reach a guy who buys a new MD every eight years or so? And, even at that, what's the most effective way of communicating with these customers? Is it via media, or is it good ol' fashioned networking? I have a suspicion that Ford dealers' commercial sales reps stay in their jobs for quite a while and develop long-term relationships with their counterparts at larger businesses. If that's the case, it might be more effective to have some sales rep pay for a meal & talk up the 7.3 with a good customer than running ads in a trade magazine?

Also: It's worth observing that Ford's savings consists entirely of the difference in interest rates between what they'd have gotten on the market in 2009 vs. what they got from the Feds. And even calculating those savings isn't straightforward. Odds are pretty high that if Ford had gotten unfavorable terms in 2009, they would have been able to refinance when the company & economy recovered, at rates that were more comparable to what they got from the Feds.

Yep. They basically got the feds to subsidize production shifts that the market was clamoring for anyway...