F250 Posted April 15, 2015 Author Share Posted April 15, 2015 (edited) Remember while GM was wasting money on Kappa Ford was wasting money building the Ford GT supercar at a time when Ford was in a near death financial crisis of their own. By the way Kappa was sold globally in Europe as Opel GT and Korea as Daewoo. Mazda Miata Mx5 has failed to sell more than 8k units in the U.S. for each of the last 5 years. Down from their 36k peak in 1990 during the Ford psrtnership years. Edited April 15, 2015 by F250 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akirby Posted April 15, 2015 Share Posted April 15, 2015 The GT did not require expensive manufacturing facilities and given the high price it's possible it actually made a profit or broke even. Apples and oranges. But Ford obviously made a lot of these same mistakes prior to 2008. If there was a business case for Kappa then we'd have a Chevy roadster today. The cancellation of the S2000 and the low Miata sales proves this is a niche market that GM should have never entered. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
F250 Posted April 15, 2015 Author Share Posted April 15, 2015 If there was a business case for Kappa then we'd have a Chevy roadster today. You mean besides the Corvette of course. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akirby Posted April 15, 2015 Share Posted April 15, 2015 (edited) You mean besides the Corvette of course. Are the Corvette and Solstice even close to the same size or performance? I specifically said Kappa, not sports car or roadster. Edited April 15, 2015 by akirby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichardJensen Posted April 15, 2015 Share Posted April 15, 2015 GM builds a good roadster and it's "Criminally negligent" It's not building the roadster that makes them almost criminally negligent. It's building the roadster when they had gigantic, glaring, obvious problems elsewhere in the company that they were ignoring. "Hi Honey, I bought a new suit today." "Did you buy any food? We have no food in the house." "Yeah. But I figure with this new suit, I can get a really good job and then we'll be able to afford all the food we need." That's Kappa, in a nutshell. They figured they could lure buyers into Pontiac and Saturn showrooms in order to see those cars, and at that point in time, salesmen would pounce on them and foist inferior GM product on them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichardJensen Posted April 15, 2015 Share Posted April 15, 2015 Ford was wasting money building the Ford GT supercar GT was cheap (for Ford) and profitable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NLPRacing Posted April 15, 2015 Share Posted April 15, 2015 Congrats on the new ride. I always thought the Sky was the looker of the two and should of become a Chevy after Saturn went away. Enjoy! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichardJensen Posted April 15, 2015 Share Posted April 15, 2015 BTW: I don't mean to rain on F250's parade. Frankly, if I had the space & patience, I'd like to have a Merkur XR4ti to monkey around with. And that---that exists because Bob Lutz wrecked Ford of Europe and then tried to hide the damage by shipping cars nobody in Europe wanted over to the US Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akirby Posted April 15, 2015 Share Posted April 15, 2015 Some people can't separate the consumer view from the business view. There are lots of great vehicles that were terrible business decisions and vice versa (K-cars e.g.). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NLPRacing Posted April 15, 2015 Share Posted April 15, 2015 BTW: I don't mean to rain on F250's parade. Frankly, if I had the space & patience, I'd like to have a Merkur XR4ti to monkey around with. And that---that exists because Bob Lutz wrecked Ford of Europe and then tried to hide the damage by shipping cars nobody in Europe wanted over to the US I've always wanted an XR4Ti too, but I can never find one with a manual transmission that wasn't completely ragged out and/or way overpriced. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
F250 Posted April 15, 2015 Author Share Posted April 15, 2015 GT was cheap (for Ford) and profitable. Ford GT was cheap to engineer and build? Flag on the play here. And from it's 2004-2006 run what outstanding sedan was Ford offering? The 4th generation 2000-2007 Taurus and the old 500. Glass houses fellas. Pardon the pun. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
F250 Posted April 15, 2015 Author Share Posted April 15, 2015 BTW: I don't mean to rain on F250's parade. Frankly, if I had the space & patience, I'd like to have a Merkur XR4ti to monkey around with. And that---that exists because Bob Lutz wrecked Ford of Europe and then tried to hide the damage by shipping cars nobody in Europe wanted over to the US No rain, discussion that's what the forum is about. I thought the XR4TI / Sierra was quite popular in Europe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
F250 Posted April 15, 2015 Author Share Posted April 15, 2015 (edited) Are the Corvette and Solstice even close to the same size or performance? I specifically said Kappa, not sports car or roadster. Oh, I thought you said "If there was a business case for Kappa then we'd have a Chevy roadster today." I thought you said it because you did. Edited April 15, 2015 by F250 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akirby Posted April 15, 2015 Share Posted April 15, 2015 Ford GT was cheap to engineer and build? Flag on the play here. And from it's 2004-2006 run what outstanding sedan was Ford offering? The 4th generation 2000-2007 Taurus and the old 500. Glass houses fellas. Pardon the pun. The GT was hand built in a mostly non Ford facilities by a small team. No assembly lines, no extra shifts at the plant. They sold just over 4K at an average cost of $175K for revenue of around $700M. By contrast Kappa sold 100K at an ATP around $20K IIRC or $2B revenue. Assuming a very generous $5K gross profit per vehicle that's about $500M. A new platform by itself costs over $2B plus an additional tophat. It's easy to see how the GT could have turned a profit while the Kappas almost certainly were huge money losers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akirby Posted April 15, 2015 Share Posted April 15, 2015 Oh, I thought you said "If there was a business case for Kappa then we'd have a Chevy roadster today." I thought you said it because you did. It's painfully obvious that the reference was to a kappa based chevy roadster. Besides, my definition of roadster does not include vehicles that are offered as both coupes and convertibles so mustang, camaro and corvette don't qualify in my book. And removable hard tops don't count as coupes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PREMiERdrum Posted April 15, 2015 Share Posted April 15, 2015 Frankly, if I had the space & patience, I'd like to have a Merkur XR4ti to monkey around with. One of the kids in the band I teach drives a manual XR4ti. He has a great time with it. It send to have been fairly reliable so far, though you can always hear him coming several minutes before you see him. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
F250 Posted April 15, 2015 Author Share Posted April 15, 2015 It's painfully obvious that the reference was to a kappa based chevy roadster. Besides, my definition of roadster does not include vehicles that are offered as both coupes and convertibles so mustang, camaro and corvette don't qualify in my book. And removable hard tops don't count as coupes. Maybe you should Google the definition of roadster. The convertible Corvette definitely fits the definition. Mustang etc aren't because they have 4 seats. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichardJensen Posted April 15, 2015 Share Posted April 15, 2015 Ford GT was cheap to engineer and build? Flag on the play here. And from it's 2004-2006 run what outstanding sedan was Ford offering? The 4th generation 2000-2007 Taurus and the old 500. Glass houses fellas. Pardon the pun. Yes, it was cheap to engineer and build as compared to the Kappas: And while Ford was engineering the GT they were simultaneously investing in significant improvements to the Focus (debut 2007), the Escape (debut 2007), and launching two new products: Fusion (debut 2006) and Edge (debut 2006). All of these products contributed to a dramatic increase in market share for Ford Motor over the last half of the decade. You did not see similar results at GM. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
F250 Posted April 15, 2015 Author Share Posted April 15, 2015 The GT was hand built in a mostly non Ford facilities by a small team. No assembly lines, no extra shifts at the plant. They sold just over 4K at an average cost of $175K for revenue of around $700M. By contrast Kappa sold 100K at an ATP around $20K IIRC or $2B revenue. Assuming a very generous $5K gross profit per vehicle that's about $500M. A new platform by itself costs over $2B plus an additional tophat. It's easy to see how the GT could have turned a profit while the Kappas almost certainly were huge money losers. Interesting math. The Ford GT original msrp was $139,995. That means the dealers paid less than that to buy them from Ford. If dealers got big adjusted market values from there (and that only happened when they were first released) then the dealer kept that extra profit not Ford. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akirby Posted April 15, 2015 Share Posted April 15, 2015 Maybe you should Google the definition of roadster. The convertible Corvette definitely fits the definition. Mustang etc aren't because they have 4 seats. Maybe you should stop playing word games - you clearly know what I meant when I referenced Kappa and it wasn't Corvette. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akirby Posted April 15, 2015 Share Posted April 15, 2015 Interesting math. The Ford GT original msrp was $139,995. That means the dealers paid less than that to buy them from Ford. If dealers got big adjusted market values from there (and that only happened when they were first released) then the dealer kept that extra profit not Ford. The ones I saw in my dealer's computer were $165K - $175K MSRP. That's all I can tell you. And this was mid 2005 ish. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
F250 Posted April 16, 2015 Author Share Posted April 16, 2015 (edited) Yes, it was cheap to engineer and build as compared to the Kappas: And while Ford was engineering the GT they were simultaneously investing in significant improvements to the Focus (debut 2007), the Escape (debut 2007), and launching two new products: Fusion (debut 2006) and Edge (debut 2006). All of these products contributed to a dramatic increase in market share for Ford Motor over the last half of the decade. You did not see similar results at GM. Some examples of the Ford GT's "cheap engineering" : "The Ford GT features many new and unique technologies, including super-plastic-formed aluminum body panels, roll-bonded floor panels, a friction-stir welded center tunnel, a “ship-in-a-bottle” gas tank, a capless fuel filler system, one-piece door panels and an aluminum engine cover with a one-piece carbon-fiber inner panel." All for only 4,000 cars. The Kappa's engines, transmissions and many other parts like the HVAC module were borrowed from other regular production GM vehicles, not so the GT. Note the capless fuel filler did make it to production on regular production cars. Let's not revise history here by 2005 Ford had lost 25% market share in 8 years. That's why their third restructuring plan was previewed in Dec 2005 and announced Jan 2006 called "The Way Forward." The plan shut down 7 assembly plants (one of them Wixom the GT's plant) 7 parts plants and eliminated 28% of Ford's employees. The only good news was they also dumped all of the damn PAG Eurotrash. Finally in Sep 2006 Mulally replaced Bill Ford and had to borrow $23.6 billion by mortgaging all of Ford's assets. All while Ford GTs were rolling off the Wixom assembly line and sharing space in showrooms with 7-year old Tauruses. Edited April 16, 2015 by F250 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akirby Posted April 16, 2015 Share Posted April 16, 2015 Almost no Ford resources were used to produce the GT - it was almost all outsourced. And it was $150K+ per! not $20k built in a factory. Nobody said Ford was perfect or didn't make bad decisions but the GT wasn't one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichardJensen Posted April 16, 2015 Share Posted April 16, 2015 (edited) Some examples of the Ford GT's "cheap engineering" : "The Ford GT features many new and unique technologies, including super-plastic-formed aluminum body panels, roll-bonded floor panels, a friction-stir welded center tunnel, a “ship-in-a-bottle” gas tank, a capless fuel filler system, one-piece door panels and an aluminum engine cover with a one-piece carbon-fiber inner panel." All for only 4,000 cars. Yep, cheap as in very cheap assembly cost. Were the individual parts expensive? Yes, but so was the car. Did Ford spend a fortune prepping a plant to assemble the GT in volume? They did not. --- And let's talk 'revisionist history': Where was Ford five years after they launched the GT? And where was GM five years after the Kappas? Heck, what happened to PONTIAC and SATURN? Ford launched the GT AND fixed their NA vehicle ops. GM launched the Kappas instead of fixing their NA ops. That's the difference. Edited April 16, 2015 by RichardJensen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jpd80 Posted April 16, 2015 Share Posted April 16, 2015 (edited) Let's not revise history here by 2005 Ford had lost 25% market share in 8 years. That's why their third restructuring plan was previewed in Dec 2005 and announced Jan 2006 called "The Way Forward." The plan shut down 7 assembly plants (one of them Wixom the GT's plant) 7 parts plants and eliminated 28% of Ford's employees. The only good news was they also dumped all of the damn PAG Eurotrash. Finally in Sep 2006 Mulally replaced Bill Ford and had to borrow $23.6 billion by mortgaging all of Ford's assets. All while Ford GTs were rolling off the Wixom assembly line and sharing space in showrooms with 7-year old Tauruses. And while we're not being revisionist, let's not forget that GT production ended in December 2006 Panther production was consolidated in Saint Thomas and Wixom never reopened. When Ford announced to the world they were borrowing heavily to close 14 plants and reduce production capacity and employees, GM pronounced to the world that it had completed its restructure and all was fine and that Ford was nuts for borrowing so much. Two years later, GM would be in Ford's head office trying to broker a merger where they would control Ford's $30 billion nest egg. Edited April 16, 2015 by jpd80 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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