SoonerLS

I'm just saying the timing was lucky, not that his recognition of it was lucky. If he'd taken much longer to recognize it, the credit markets would've been frozen and they might not have been able to secure the financing to right the ship. Absolutely.

Ford did get lucky in one regard--they were lucky that Bill Ford recognized that their then-current status quo was untenable before the financial crisis hit. Everything since then has been the result of hard work and diligence.

There was a big write-up of the Lincoln LS in some technical journal a few years ago because they used some kind of innovative metal adhesive in a joint about half-way up the C-pillar. Maybe it was a mixture of adhesives and welds; it has been a few years since I saw it.

When I bought my LS, the dealer offered to trade wheels when I made some off-handed remark about them (I didn't take them up on the offer because I didn't dislike the stock wheels). I know my local Ford dealer has even put on aftermarket wheels on trucks to make a deal; that's how my dad got the wheels and tires he now has on his '05 F350--they made him a screaming deal on the take-offs from one of those deals (he basically got brand new wheels and tires, plus the recalibration for the bigger wheel/tire combo, for less than the cost of a set of tires).

Ahh, I get it now. Carry on...

I don't mean it that way--it just seemed like an odd interjection. I really don't get the point of it.

Jaguar was talking about that, but I think that may have been a Ford project slated for Jag, which may have been the source of the once-rumored (and since-denied) Lincoln performance hybrid supercar. Or maybe they were independent ideas; I don't recall now.

In other words, it'll take them almost half a year to match the number of F-Series sold in the US in August. So what's the point of saying that the Ranger is sold in more markets than the F-Series when the F-Series is handily outselling it in a single market (and doing it profitably)?

How many of those Rangers do they sell, and at what profit?

Ford isn't "claiming" that, the EPA is; Ford is just including the figures as required by law. And it sounds like Kansas has a few too many lead-footed truck drivers. :lol:

Going by the reactions of folks I know inside Ford, that caught nearly everyone by surprise. So, you're saying there's a chance that they won't be ugly? :bag: :lol: Sounds like a bunch of good news for Lincoln!

Well, it worked for the Russians/Soviets against Napoleon and Hitler; if you burn that son of a gun to the ground, there's nothing for your enemies to use against you...

"All the performance of a V6 with the fuel economy of a V8"...

You mean like the one it just got? You know, the one they showed at LA, right before it got overshadowed by a single-frame sneak peek of the new MKZ nose...

And by this you mean, "there's no problem at all, and anybody who claims otherwise is a liar," right?

Well I'll be a suck-egg mule--someone finally mentioned the tarted-up Toyotas when talking about platform-sharing...

This can only be about branding. There's no way they can separate it; even if Lincoln were capable of standing on its own, the idea of separating it from Ford would completely undercut Mulally's "One Ford" concept. I can see it now: "We're going to get all of you units out there working together and leveraging our global resources...well, except for Lincoln. They're special." That's just a disaster waiting to happen...

Yeah--I didn't mean to imply that there was money changing hands, just that there is some "cost" inherent in the trade. F'rinstance, the dealer with the car you want might ask your dealer for a higher-margin vehicle in exchange--if he has to exchange, say, a truck he could sell for a $5K profit for a car that he's going to sell to you for a $3K profit, then that's probably not a deal he'd want to make.

What I should mention is that what I've said comes from observation and what salesmen/sales managers have told me; I have no first-hand knowledge of the actual allocation limits. I do know that my Lincoln was an inter-dealer trade, and a sales manager (now general manager) that I've known for 20 years told me he can pretty much get any new Ford from any Ford dealership in the region, but I've never really been looking for anything that's supply-constrained.

According to Automotive News, Ford and the CAW have reached a tentative deal: The full article is available at http://www.autonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120917/OEM/309179718/caw-reaches-tentative-labor-deal-with-ford

The allocations are really only an issue when it comes to cars that are in high demand and short supply (think '05 Mustang GT), so Ford isn't really refusing to sell to a customer--if the car is in that much demand, there's very likely already a customer who's waiting to take delivery on it at the other dealership. AFAIK, the only way around an allocation limit would be an inter-dealer trade, but on a supply-constrained vehicle, the cost of the trade is probably not going to be worth it to the dealer requesting the trade.

Holiday Ro-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ad...

That makes sense--as I was reading it, it looked like you were saying Flat Rock would only be producing those vehicles. My mistake.

As I understand it, Hermosillo has been running, essentially, at capacity pretty much since the Fusion first rolled off the line. That doesn't exactly make it a prime candidate for picking up any slack.

Umm, owning a Toy truck automatically eliminates you from the ranks of "truck guys." It's right there in the by-laws...