CAFE and other tax on engine sizes in other parts of the world. 

The pink ones, obviously......

them whompies are closing up my sinuses.  You better back off another 10...

Interesting discussion point: If Ford was completely about profit, it would shrink the business to just F Series and large SUV plants and skip the rest…….maybe keep Explorer/Aviator, Transit and T6 products. The business would be highly profitable with a very small manufacturing and engineering footprint so why don’t they?  

Better then the Jimmy haulin' hogs I guess....

I see a Bronco pickup moving the needle toward 75K+ sales, mostly at the expense of Gladiator     The limitations would be less because any Bronco pickup truck would share more parts as opposed to Ranger that shares absolutely zero body or interior parts. 

But how much of that is due to it being limited in production due to the Bronco itself.   I just think its awful big leap to put ANOTHER pickup, either a Bronco Pickup or a unibody Pickup into a brand new plant when there are obvious gaping holes in the lineup that plant could fill. I still stand by that fact that Ford is just saying something to say something because they don't have the plan nailed down yet for TTP. They still have 36+ plus months for things to change and a possible administration change in January 2029 and UAW possibly forcing changes. I just think that they are mining what they can out of the pickup market and adding anything will hurt other products in sales.    IMO they'd be far better off going with a CUV that would slot into the Edge/Escape size at that plant and maybe add a second line for another product. 

Yes the excuse is that Ford is hindered by being based in the USA vs Japan, due to USD being the currency that everything else is pegged against.    As for Ford's shrinkage in market share-it also boils down to having much more selection on the market with new makes, like Chinese auto brands or Hyundai/Kia coming into new markets.

Ford sells 50k Rangers now.  Gladiator sells 45k.  No reasonto think a Bronco pickup would sell less.

. Ford's proclivity to make minimal investments in cars is because they aren't very profitable to begin with.  Some were absolutely losing money.  We've already discussed ad nauseum the reasons why - too many redundant platforms and too many changes.  Ford created 9 different ecoboost engines plus multiple versions of some while Toyota soldiered on with NA2.5s and 3.5s and a turbo 2.0.  And their car platforms haven't change much in decades.  That's how you keep costs down.  So of course that is self inflicted.  We keep saying that over and over but you guys don't hear it.  But that's water under the bridge at this point - the question is how should Ford respond?   Do they spend tons of money fixing fusion and focus and escape to realize a 3% return or do they spend far less money and replace them with products that have higher margins?  Ford has that option.  Others don't have those types of vehicles or good options to make them.   And there is a huge difference between 3% and 10% margins.  Let's talk $30k vehicles at 3% and $40k vehicles at 10%.  It takes 550,000 units to make half a billion dollars on the cheaper one.  And that requires 2 huge factories with 3 shifts each.  And with only a $900 margin per vehicle if you get in a price war and have to put an extra $1k rebate on the hood you're losing money.  No margin for error.     Meanwhile the $40k vehicle makes $4k profit per unit so it only takes 125K units to make half a billion profit.  That's one factory and 1 or 2 shifts - less than half the fixed overhead.  And you can survive price wars or recessions and still turn a profit.   It's also a zero sum game unless you have tons of extra cash (Ford doesn't) or you're willing to go into more debt to expand vehicle capacity by hiring tons more designers, engineers, testers, marketers and building expensive new factories.  Especially if all you're getting is a 3% ROI.  Therefore you have to kill existing projects to fund new stuff.   What you thought when Ford was selling hundreds of thousands of small cars was that they must be raking in the cash.  But when Mulally took over Ford admitted they were losing $3K on each focus they sold.  So why were they (and GM) selling them of they lost money?  Because of the CAFE offset that allowed them to sell larger more profitable ones.  And back then if you closed a factory you still had to pay the workers.  Now the rules are different so the incentives to make small cars at a loss or small profit just isn't there.    To put it another way - corporations are investments.  Why would they invest billions to make cars for a 3% return when Ford could put that money in bonds and get a guaranteed 5% or higher return?   And I beg to differ on F series resources.  They do visual refreshes every 3 years and major changes every 6 years.  Also consider there are 2 cabs and chassis, 12 cab/bed combinations and 6 different engine/transmissions plus dozens of options and packages.  That's a full time job for a huge team of people and part time for others.  And at an average price of $60k at 15% net profit (which are both probably on the low side) that's a net profit of $9k per vehicle or close to $9B.  From one line of vehicles in 3 plants.   That's why it gets all the resources.