And now, it is adding CE1....lets hope it is a successful continuation of Louisville Assembly. 

You have to remeber that Ford wanted to re-purpose KTP to build the upcoming new Super Duty pickups.  KTP was FAR more profitable building Super Duty pickups than they ever were building heavy trucks.   That article mentions that the new AeroMax had 50% more plastic in it that competing class 8 trucks.  I believe that!  It's amazing how fast those trucks vanished from the landscape.  Early Louisvilles seemed to hang on forever, but HN80's seemed to disappear overnight.  Also it was interesting to read Ford was planning an aluminum cab for the HN80.

Really?  How does Ford have authority to determine that a safety related defect should not prompt a recall?  Interesting concept.  Sure, there are voluntary recalls, but those would eventually become mandated by the NHTSA anyway.  

Jac the Knife dove on the deal not because Ford Heavy was losing money, quite the contrary, it was making a solid 4%, But Jacques said, he could make more $$ by putting the investment in Class 8 in a bank instead....that is the issue, sure, from a purely "making money" point, he was technically correct, but the fact that he lost those transactional sales into other Ford products as well is a loss that cannot be measured. 

Normally, Ford offers discounts like this when it knows a big slow down in sales is ahead or maybe the icy winds are already being felt in some regions….

Oh if only life were that simple, let’s see how Ford gets through the launch period before we go spiking the football. Ford is pitching all these new processes in the new BEV, that’s both exciting and dangerous if things don’t go as planned. Lots of real world learnings coming but I’m certain that Ford will take its time and hopefully have a good result.

Essentially a good read. But I used to read my customer's Automotive News every week or so, and Ford Class 6 thru 8 sales were always in the top 3, sometimes top 2. So when the new generation of L-series came out in 1996, Daimler/Freightliner panicked and they knew they had to get rid of that pesky Ford competition. So Freightliner offered Jac Nasser -- I think it was he -- $300 million (not $200 million). Ford never gave it a chance. By the way, here in New England I'm not seeing many Volvo or Macks. One thing that was true is that Ford was too complacent, having let the C-series and L-series go virtually unchanged for around 30 years. Another thing I'll say here is that when parents waited with their children at the school bus stops and saw Ford on the front of school buses, and Memorial Day crowds saw the Ford name on fire trucks, that translated to more civilian car and light truck sales.

They really are going out of their way to find old problems and get them fixed and out of the way going forward.  In the past a lot of these would not be recalls at all.  The important metric is warranty costs and that appears to be going down.

Hey if it works and lets them get suppliers under control for Ford Blue too then you could fire Farley, hire someone who can actually execute anything at all, and the company suddenly looks a lot better. Farley would have set up its cost structure going forward like he wanted, and the next guy can take that ball and run with it. Everyone goes home happy.

There have been a lot of recalls lately, but I think they're working to clean up a lot of old loose ends and most are not on new models (even though this one is).  With that said, most of the recalls are minor items (in regards to what needs fixed), and it wouldn't sway me away from buying one.   I think I've currently got 2 (or is it 3?) open recalls on my F350 and there are no fixes yet.  The Bronco has possibly this one, and I think we have one on the Mach-E.