mackinaw

If Virginia doesn't want this plant, Michigan sure does.

Anecdotal evidence, but I see far more PHEV's charging at the local Electrify America charging station that I do EV's.

At the time, it was just a summer job to make money for college. Whatever the engineers wanted me to do, I did. Mostly just menial stuff, like locating and moving vehicles to the experimental garage so they could install whatever the newest thing was. But I also met a lot of now-famous engineers like Joe Macura (427), Bill Gay (255 DOHC Indy Engine), George Stirrat (Chief Engineer 221/260/289/302) and others. Fun times for a college kid. It paid well too.

Back in 1972 or so, I was a student "gofer" at Engine Engineering in Dearborn. Inside the engineering building, they had a huge fenced-in crib where they stored engines. On the top shelf were two Boss 429 engines. I often wondered where those engines ended up.

Ha! My sister had a Grabber Blue Pinto.

I owned two Pinto's back in the 70's. A green 1971 hatchback and a copper 1975 hatchback. They were good little cars, reliable and able to handle northern Michigan winters (with snow tires). They did rust though, both of mine starting to show rust after two years. They have a bad reputation, but I had good luck with both of mine.

I think it's a good looking truck, but I suspect the production version will be much more tame. This reminds me of 1994. Back then, Dodge was hopelessly behind both Ford and GM in full-sized pickups. They needed something to grab people's attention and gambled on the-then radical 1994 RAM. Of course it was a big hit. Fast forward to 2023, and Ram is late to the BEV party, so their Hail Mary pass is the Ram Revolution. Not sure their gamble will work this time.

This discussion jogged my memory. John McElroy of Autoline Daily had some interesting observations on how fast the U.S. EV fleet will become electric. This is from May, 2020, during the height of Covid mania, but probably still holds today. To quote, "“Even if half of all new car sales were EV starting today, it would take until 2055 until half the fleet was electric.” Listen to the first minute or so. http://www.autoline.tv/journal/?p=67766

This is the quote of the, very young, year. Very well put.

Northern Michigan has a lot of Big 3 retirees. Standing joke up here is that the only time they take their (fill in the blank of your favorite pickup truck) on a dirt road is on the first day of firearm deer season.

The aftermath of our 20" + snowfall.

A good question, and one of the reasons I'm leery of BEV's. We woke up this morning to 24" of snow. It's 17 degrees out right now. The power has stayed on (so far) but other parts of northern Michigan haven't been so lucky. This is a bad winter storm, but nothing out of the ordinary for this part of the state. I'd rather tackle a storm like this in a vehicle that I'm familiar with (ICE) that something new (BEV). If i was buying a new F-150 today, it be ICE powered, not a Lightning.

It doesn't help the stock price when the Elon sells $24 billion dollars of Tesla stock to fund his purchase of Twitter. Elon is his worst enemy. Investors like stability in a CEO, not some guy who is acting like a spoiled rich kid not knowing how to spend his money.

I never warmed up to the 71-73 Bunkie Knudsen Mustang (to me, they were too big, heavy and ungainly), but you can't argue with the success of the Mustang II. Absolutely perfect timing coming out on the heels of the first gas crisis. Sales went from 135,000 (1973) to 386,000 (1974).

I imagine Ford has identified what the Bronco "DNA" is, and will keep that basic style in the years going forward. Jeep, Mustang, etc., have all done the same thing.

Both Farley and Mark Reuss have suggested that hydrogen has a place in HD trucks (e.g. F-350).

Cheaper mousetrap. Sounds like Toyota's current BEV's cost much more to assemble the Tesla's. So they're redesigning their BEV's to be cheaper to build.

This is from a few day's ago. Toyota is rethinking their EV strategy AGAIN, probably delaying some future EV programs. https://www.carscoops.com/2022/12/toyota-delaying-ev-program-to-implement-tesla-beating-tech-report-claims/

Autoline suggested, just a theory, that Stellantis may be making the Belvedere plant a bargaining chip in next year's UAW contract negotiations. What will the UAW give up to keep this plant open?

Yep. https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1134753_ford-patents-trisected-tailgate-takes-aim-at-gm-and-ram

$3.15/gallon in northern Michigan.

You're missing the point. Ford profited greatly by selling full-size, rear-wheel drive vehicles to all those WW2 generation folks who wanted a full-sized car, not a down-sized FWD car they we're being forced into. I personally know of several dyed-in-the-wool Buick owners who bought a Grand Maquis or Town Car once Buick discontinued the Roadmaster. This goes back to Kirby's point that the same thing will happen during the BEV/ICE transition. There is probably a sizeable segment of the population that wants nothing to do with BEV's and will drive an ICE powered vehicle as long as they can.

Same thing happened back in the mid-90's when GM discontinued their full-size, body-on-frame vehicles (Chevy Caprice, Buick Roadmaster, etc.). People who still wanted a conventional full-size vehicle moved to the Crown Vic, Grand Marquis and Town Car. Panther-platform sales (profitably) continued on until 2012.

From today's Detroit Free Press. And in a shocking development, not one of these Super-Duties are a BEV. "The Dearborn automaker shattered a sales record for the month of November after reaching a record-setting pace of 52,518 new orders for the 2023 Super Duty pickup in the last five days of October, when it averaged more than 10,000 trucks a day, according to monthly sales data. But the November sales report nearly triples that figure. Ford now has orders for 151,870 Super Duty trucks since the order bank opened Oct. 27, the company revealed Friday. "The demand is just insane," said Todd Dunn, president of UAW Local 862, whose members build the vehicle at the Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville. "A lot of people love those vehicles for farms, hauling. It's a beast." These are not reservations; these are orders placed through Ford car dealerships on behalf of actual customers who have decided to purchase the vehicle." https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2022/12/03/latest-ford-super-duty-orders-set-insane-pace/69695780007/

You seem to have a knack for getting into focus groups. Not your first one, if I remember correctly. Location?