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Ford China launches 2020 Mondeo with new interior


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23 minutes ago, grbeck said:

 

I thought that Ford is capacity-constrained...which is why the Focus and the Fusion got the ax. Ford wasn't going to use limited production capacity for vehicles that generate small profits. 


Incremental capacity for 50k-100k vehicles is different than 400k-500k combined Fusion and Focus sales.  There is not enough capacity to continue with Focus and Fusion and do all the new vehicles in the current footprint.  

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36 minutes ago, grbeck said:

 

I thought that Ford is capacity-constrained...which is why the Focus and the Fusion got the ax. Ford wasn't going to use limited production capacity for vehicles that generate small profits. 

Ford has multiple plants that are underused - the Canadian plant that produces the Edge, the Mustang plant, and the Kentucky plant that makes Escape come to mind. The Hermosillo plant that currently makes Fusion/MKZ may have room for another 75 to 100K of production depending if any other products are assigned there beyond Bronco Sport, Transit Connect, and the small pick-up.

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18 hours ago, mackinaw said:

 

The Japanese market is hardly open.  In 2019, about 4,825,000 vehicle sales were to domestic (Japanese) manufacturers.  Only 367,000 were to foreign manufacturers.  In percentage terms, 93% Japanese, 7% foreign.  Toyota was the top seller at about 1,550,000 vehicles. Mercedes was the top foreign make at 66,500.  Jeep came in at 13,400.  

 

https://www.best-selling-cars.com/japan/2019-full-year-japan-best-selling-car-brands-and-market-analysis/

 

Also, a little known fact: In Japan, American car manufactures can only advertise in English and not Japanese. The have this law to protect the Japanese domestic car manufacturing. 

 

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1 hour ago, zipzoomflyfast said:

 

Also, a little known fact: In Japan, American car manufactures can only advertise in English and not Japanese. The have this law to protect the Japanese domestic car manufacturing. 

 

 

That's the most stupid post I've read in a forum for a long time. It takes not even 2 second to google this.

 

 

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Ford competed in Japan just fine for some 20 odd years when it was the top selling non-luxury foreign brand. The reason things ended the way it did has something to do with a guy named Mark Fields (yea whatever happened to that guy eh?)

 

From the time Ford rescued Mazda the first time in 1979 until Ford sold it in 2010, Ford models were sold in a Mazda dealer network called Autorama. The rebadged Mazda and imported Ford together was regularly the best selling foreign brand. In 1995, Ford increased its investment in Mazda to 33.4% enough to gain control of the board. From that point on until 2010 when Ford sold the company, Mazda was basically a Ford division with Ford appointed senior management. Ford was essentially the 5th largest car company in Japan after Toyota, Suzuki, Honda, and Nissan from 1995 to 2010.

 

Mazda ran into financial trouble in early 1990s when it had grand vision of competing with Toyota by launching a whole bunch of quasi luxury brands (some never got off the ground like Amati in the US). By 1995, Mazda needed another rescue so Ford stepped in with cash, increased its investment to 33.4% and took management control. Henry Wallace was the first Ford appointed CEO of Mazda. Mazda was floundering in Japan after the economic bubble melted in Japan and it had too many domestic brands: Mazda, Ford, efini, Eunos, and Autozam. Wallace decided to streamline the operation and focus on the Mazda and Ford brands and cut efini, Eunos, and Autozam. Mark Fields took over as Mazda CEO in 1999 and he made a couple more changes. He got rid of the commercial truck and pickup business and decided it made more sense to focus on singular Mazda brand in Japan so he ended the rebadged Ford models. At the time, that made sense because Mazda was basically a Ford division and no one envisioned Ford selling Mazda. It was the crown jewel of Ford's international portfolio.

 

Until that point, Ford had a full line up of both domestically produced and imported cars for sale in Japan. 

Import: Mondeo, Taurus, Mustang, Explorer

Domestic: Festiva (Aspire), Laser, Telstar, Econovan, Freda 

(Escape was in final development and would come later in 2001 but the decision to gut the Ford brand was already made)

 

After Fields decision to gut the domestic Ford line up, Fiesta and Focus were brought in but they were never as popular. And so overtime, the Ford brand withered and became somewhat irrelevant in Japan.

 

And unlike the Germans, Ford was and still is a mainstream brand in Japan. So unlike VW, which can subsidize selling Golf from profit generated by Porsche and Audi, Ford was sink or swim on selling Fiesta and Focus. It was more or less achieve similar level of success as PSA which was in the same boat. 

Edited by bzcat
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3 minutes ago, fuzzymoomoo said:

Correct. They cut their third shift in the last months of 2019 Escape production. 

 

I would think you can produce over 300,000 vehicles/year on two shifts if need be. Just add overtime hours on each shift and weekends. Adding and training a 3rd shift has to be expensive. Too bad though Louisville is going down to one shift. Hybrid inventory must be low and many are waiting for plugin. 

 

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7 minutes ago, FordBuyer said:

 

I would think you can produce over 300,000 vehicles/year on two shifts if need be. Just add overtime hours on each shift and weekends. Adding and training a 3rd shift has to be expensive. 


But you’re still making out capacity whether it’s 3 shifts or 2 with overtime.

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42 minutes ago, FordBuyer said:

 

I would think you can produce over 300,000 vehicles/year on two shifts if need be. Just add overtime hours on each shift and weekends. Adding and training a 3rd shift has to be expensive. Too bad though Louisville is going down to one shift. Hybrid inventory must be low and many are waiting for plugin. 

 

On three shifts, Ford was doing over 430k builds at Louisville.

 

Its not about maximum production, it's about matching demand from buyers and unfortunately,

Ford chooses to control demand with higher prices.They choose to take more profit from fewer sales

and less builds - fewer resources expended. People don't like it but that's how Ford is these days.

 

andi it'swhy I'm not so excited about Mexican products, they will probably be priced too high to add more than 

what would be considered replacement sales for losses on the car side....

Edited by jpd80
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13 minutes ago, jpd80 said:

On three shifts, Ford was doing over 430k builds at Louisville.

 

Its not about maximum production, it's about matching demand from buyers and unfortunately,

Ford chooses to control demand with higher prices.They choose to take note profit from fewer sales

and less builds - fewer resources expended. People don't like it but that's how Ford is these days.

 

Hmmm...2020 Escspe S going for $20,000, SE'S for $22,000, and SEL's for as low as $25,000 seems pretty affordable to me if you still have a job.

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5 minutes ago, FordBuyer said:

 

Hmmm...2020 Escspe S going for $20,000, SE'S for $22,000, and SEL's for as low as $25,000 seems pretty affordable to me if you still have a job.

Only because over at GM, similar products are going for a lot less...

The now is an exceptional situation but shows us a lot about various manufacturers.

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52 minutes ago, FordBuyer said:

 

I would think you can produce over 300,000 vehicles/year on two shifts if need be. Just add overtime hours on each shift and weekends. Adding and training a 3rd shift has to be expensive. Too bad though Louisville is going down to one shift. Hybrid inventory must be low and many are waiting for plugin. 

 


There's rules in the UAW contract that say after so many overtime weekend shifts the company has to add an additional shift. 

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29 minutes ago, fuzzymoomoo said:


There's rules in the UAW contract that say after so many overtime weekend shifts the company has to add an additional shift. 

But besides that, Ford plans and forecast production builds, suppliers are also a big part of that.

 

You're right about defined limits, there’s so many variables to consider and I would hope that Ford makes good decisions in the future, they have a lot riding on it.

Edited by jpd80
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7 hours ago, probowler said:

Does anyone have any insider info they can reveal whether Ford is planning any new factories? Or is any possible new project like that going to have to wait for these new product launches to conclude?

 

Well they were building that San Luis Potosi plant and then cancelled it.  I can't imagine they're building a new plant anytime soon.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 5/13/2020 at 2:56 PM, rperez817 said:

 

Ford does have a cost disadvantage with Fusion/Mondeo compared to similar sedans from Toyota, Honda, Nissan, and Hyundai, but not because of an "expensive platform". Ford's expenses are greater because their product development and manufacturing processes aren't as efficient. CD4 platform did lead to some improvements in those areas compared to older Ford platforms, but Ford's competitors still have an advantage in bringing new and redesigned vehicles to market quickly and efficiently.[/quote]

 

Nice opinion, would you care to back it up with data?  

 

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1 hour ago, ESP08 said:

 

Nice opinion, would you care to back it up with data?  

 

 

Not hard to back up if you consider that Ford has had 3 different platforms for Fusion within the span of 10 years (2012, CD3.   2013-2020 - CD4.   2022 - C2).   And in the same time frame they introduced 4 brand new ecoboost engines - 1.5L 3 cylinder, 1.5L 4 cylinder, 1.6L, 2.0L.

 

Meanwhile Toyota just takes the old Camry platform, tweaks it a little and puts a new tophat on every 6 years.  I do think they introduced one new 2.0L turbo engine but the rest is largely unchanged.   It's a successful model from a financial perspective.

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1 hour ago, akirby said:

 

Not hard to back up if you consider that Ford has had 3 different platforms for Fusion within the span of 10 years (2012, CD3.   2013-2020 - CD4.   2022 - C2).   And in the same time frame they introduced 4 brand new ecoboost engines - 1.5L 3 cylinder, 1.5L 4 cylinder, 1.6L, 2.0L.

 

Meanwhile Toyota just takes the old Camry platform, tweaks it a little and puts a new tophat on every 6 years.  I do think they introduced one new 2.0L turbo engine but the rest is largely unchanged.   It's a successful model from a financial perspective.

 

Those platforms were shared across models and in the case of the CD3 even manufacturers (Mazda).   

Engines, again spread out across the line up. 

I see more speculation based on familiarity with Ford and far less familiarity with Toyota.  

I'm just looking for data as opposed to arm-chair speculation.  

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39 minutes ago, akirby said:

 

Not hard to back up if you consider that Ford has had 3 different platforms for Fusion within the span of 10 years (2012, CD3.   2013-2020 - CD4.   2022 - C2).   And in the same time frame they introduced 4 brand new ecoboost engines - 1.5L 3 cylinder, 1.5L 4 cylinder, 1.6L, 2.0L.

 

Meanwhile Toyota just takes the old Camry platform, tweaks it a little and puts a new tophat on every 6 years.  I do think they introduced one new 2.0L turbo engine but the rest is largely unchanged.   It's a successful model from a financial perspective.


Well Toyota has also rapidly moved everything over to TNGA to get massive economies of scale. Ford meanwhile just lets things in each vehicle kingdom carry on for extended periods of time. Ford should have just cancelled the MCE of the 2019 Edge and moved to a new one in 2020 on C2.

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12 minutes ago, ESP08 said:

 

Those platforms were shared across models and in the case of the CD3 even manufacturers (Mazda).   

Engines, again spread out across the line up. 

I see more speculation based on familiarity with Ford and far less familiarity with Toyota.  

I'm just looking for data as opposed to arm-chair speculation.  

 

If I develop 6 new platforms and 6 new powertrains and you only develop 3 of each in the same time frame I'm spending twice as much as you are no matter how they're shared.  That's all I'm saying.   That's not arm-chair speculation.

 

It's also not worth arguing about.

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In this new post covid economy, IMO a Fusion like vehicle is needed more than ever in the Ford stable. A $22,000 Fusion is much better value than $22,000 Ecosport and it's a value oriented economy now. Ford really needs to fill that value hole it has been giving little attention to except for Escape SE and noncompetitive Ecosport. North America really needs the Fusion NOW. Ford has extra capacity all over the place including both plants in Mexico. With the MKZ dumped, even Hermosillo could easily build 150,000 Fusions/year. 

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