This is true but it does help them avoid the Stellantis disease. That would weigh down any positive changes they make elsewhere. Ironically unlike Stellantis, VAG has the opposite issue where Skoda/Lambo/Bentley are weighed down by VW/Audi/Porsche. 

Aside from the direct costs of physically shutting a plant down, closing a factory means it and the fixed capital inside’s value as an asset plummets. This is a loss that won’t be realized until you sell what remains of the asset. You also cancel supplier contracts which incurs monetary costs. Cancelling product development means everything invested into that program goes to zero, firing workers costs severance etc.   Volkswagen/VAG had a business model where they built shit in Germany and exported it everywhere else. This worked because of free trade and all costs (shipping, energy, etc) were cheap. The recent geopolitical developments in trade, the Middle East, and Russia/Ukraine have specifically made all of these factors turn completely against the model of building things in Germany and exporting globally. Combined with VAG incompetence in the US and China, you run into their current situation of having like 100 redundant models, employing 2x the amount of workers Toyota does, all located in a country that is suddenly not very good to build cars in, bringing in the same amount of revenue as Toyota does.    This additional 50k cuts feels a bit luxurious, chasing a profit margin for the sake of the profit margin. But overall their business model had a perfect storm (a lot of which was their own poor decision making) and now they have to shift towards a more localized production system with a leaner, focused, localized product range. They would probably like to be like Toyota but are more likely to end up like Ford, GM, Renault. Worst case scenario they become like Stellantis where you have a core that doesn’t suck (Fiat, Jeep, Ram) and a lot of bullshit that does suck (everything else) but unlike Stellantis they are probably cutting useless brands like SEAT, selling Ducati, getting out of Bugatti, and so on. 

Keep in mind they get the Everest also, which would be just about identical outside of styling and removeable top also, which is inverse to the situation in North America. 

Hi, any idea as to when the 2027 Mustang order guide would be coming out? Is it delayed due to a mid-cycle refresh? Thank you for your help.

Not to mention through the joint venture requirements, we handed them all of our knowledge just for the sake of being in their market.     Meaning a place to produce more because of low wages? It's so small, though, that there'd be a limit to that ,no?

And I want to be clear, I think that Basecamp model can be successful if they've analyzed the market well.  I just question the "niche" comments, of course with the caveat of market-appropriate/approved powertrains.

I was just thinking this as well.  It also means they'll have one "Front" of the cab structure (front door to b-pillar) for all trucks (well, single cabs I guess would be slightly different)......I wonder if they'd slightly increase the size of the SuperCab rear seat area to accommodate this change?  My brother has one, and it would be extremely tight to try to get in there if it were a regular swing door.

Yeah that's weird to me. You and I don't live in Australia for course, but from what I've seen, there are huge stretches of just nothing but wilderness, even moreso than the US. So you think a brutish and capable offroader like the bronco would have a ton of demand in an environment like that. 

Question for you @jpd80 as our resident Aussie market expert......   American Ford Bronco Rejected For Australian Market   According to Drive, Ford deemed the American Bronco a bit too "niche" for the Australian market, and instead, it has opted to sell the Ford Bronco Basecamp in that country, as Ford Authority reported earlier this week. “If you think about the U.S. Bronco, it is quite an extreme off-road vehicle – you take the doors off, you can take the roof off – it’s quite an extreme vehicle,” said Ford Australia president and CEO, Fadi Mawal. “When we looked at that, we felt we could bring that into Australia, but it would be quite niche." “We weren’t sure it would be the best fit for our market, whereas you look at Bronco Basecamp, it’s got a lot of the capability of Bronco, it’s got a lot of the attributes of Bronco, it’s got similar styling themes, but it’s more on-road use, it can do adventure and city, and it’s super hybrid. We feel it’s got the right combination of attributes that matches Australian consumers.”     Let's say Ford had offered a powertrain that complied with local regulations (hybrid or whatever).......so, my question is .....do you agree with this assessment that our Bronco would've been too "niche" for the Aussie market?   Seems kind of dumb to me...

The ultimate issue is that China will just get more expensive to deal with as time goes on-either geopolitically or in actual costs. Everything is going to get more expensive because there isn't places that are under developed that are stable enough to handle high end manufacturing. China is in the middle of a demographic issue along with the rest of the world, with its population getting older and older and less babies being born. The US is about 5-10 years behind the rest of the world in that regard. Its starting to cripple Germany and other EU countries (which have other issues are being exasperated by this) economies, not to mention overly aggressive regulations.    The world is ultimately becoming less interconnected because the US doesn't want to be the worlds ocean police anymore. Too many countries got "lazy and fat" because of that and need to figure out their path forward on how they are going to secure energy etc. going forward, unless they are willing to pull there weight (see Japan and Australia for example). Why do you think the US (right or wrong) is pushing certain things in North and South America? Because there is going to be a decupling of the current world order. I've heard Cuba becoming the new China in the New World since they are basically at 1950 era tech but have a well educated but under paid workforce, but there are other political considerations to play out there.