Ford to slash production by 21%

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The H2, H3, Toyota FJ and that Bronco concept all have the same disease ... awkward fugliness syndrome.
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Best looking truck line? Nissan, I think.
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--- Bror Jace
 
The only way Ford and GM will ultimatly survive is to break the union. Trust me it will happen sooner or later, whether Ford is running Ford, or Toyota is running Ford.
 
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Originally posted by ScottB:

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Originally posted by Auto-Union:
Exposed door hindges? Is this 1930 or 2006?

For cryin' out loud. I think the US has big problems on their hands, and it's not exposed hinges - which can work just fine, BTW...


I'm sure they will work fine, it's a matter of aesthetics though.
 
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Originally posted by chewbacca:
The domestic auto makers (you all who know who "they" are) are going to have to learn the same thing Harley Davidson did in the late '70's, mid '80's. They must all learn that you cannot make junk, ignore market trends and most of all, never, ever underestimate your competition!
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It is unfortunately, almost too late. It may take government intervention as it did with H-D.


I believe you hit the nail on the head.
 
It depends on the goverment backing. Back the union and break the company, back the company and break the union. The unions are important. They collect dues and sell health and life insurance. The manufacturers do make vehicles, but really they are a retirement home with the union acting as the management agency. If you break Ford you will destroy one of the biggest health care companies in the world. The side effects might destroy the economy. The politicans can't fix it because they are amateurs that won a popularity contest. The approach that Chrysler took appears to be working. They were bought out by Mercedes. It was not a merger. Every important position of power is held by a Mercedes person. If the French government buys into General Motors, that leaves Toyota to buy Ford, just to protect their position. The GM deal might look like a merger, but if Toyota buys Ford, they have the cash to destroy the unions, and they will. So it's a market deal. If GM and Ford don't fix their own problems, someone else will. Neither company will 'go under'. You should be buying stock as fast as you can, not short selling. The price is low right now and it will go lower, but it will be worth a fortune when the fix is in.
 
"I'm sure they will work fine, it's a matter of aesthetics though."

It's intentional - and I guarantee it's not problem for those would buy one. Myself included
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Scott
 
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the unions only care about lining their pockets and not about the employee!!

The unions are agents for the manufacturers' healthcare and retirement system. The employee is envolved, though, he/she makes up the body count. They are very important, because it's the dues they pay, that generates the union income. Makes the manufacturers look pretty stupid. They have to buy factories, machines, raw materials, sigh performance contracts and administrate everything. The unions just collect dues, have expensive lunches and vacations. They need a couple of office building and a bank account. They have to find management people that are willing to give up working for a living and become union officials. They usually have to accept hugh pay raises and generous benefit and retirement packages. It's hard to find honest people that will give up work and take the salaries that come with these union positions. It could wreck long term planning because you may retire before your 50 and find out you have so much money there is no point in continuing to work. So, don't think that employees are worthless. They are the ones that pay for all this, and are happy to do it, because the union protects them. You would not want these members to be forced into a job where they compete with others in the free market. No sir. You job is based in time on the job and the union is there to protect that. It makes a bank robber look like an honest man. At least he exposes himself to risk and shows the teller a gun, before the takes the money.
 
true the employee are the number one priority.. its ashame unions just care about the monies that the hardworking employee gives to them and for what? nothing!!...the unions are a liberal invention and should be abolished!!
 
Unions don't do company planning, manage the world wide operations, do the marketing, product line balance, product design, design for reliability and reliability development, etc., the things that seem to have gotten Ford into the position where it is. Ford, like GM and to a lesser degree Chrysler, essentially relied upon high profit margin pickups and SUVs, Ford probably the most as the F series trucks have been the best selling vehicles in the US for about a quarter of a century.

Anyone could read the writing on the wall, where gas price increases would eventually torpedo such a strategy, but management was greedy and didn't have the leadership to slug it out in the lower margin fuel efficient vehicles. Noe they have to downsize operations and play catch up.

Unions don't have much at all to do with where they're at.
 
What's with all these ignorant anti-union posts? The unions are largely responsible for the middle class in this country. Unions are a voice for the little guy. Maybe you would like to work for 30 cents an hour like the Chinese workers and work 12-14 hour days seven days a week. Then for all your hard work you can ride your bicycle back to your dirt floor shack and pick through the garbage dump for a little extra income.
 
Unions also don't engineer **** like the TFI-IV and the self-destructing Taurus transmissions.

Incidentally, I suspect that usage of thermal tape instead of thermal grease between the TFI-IV module and the distributor would have prevented many of the failures.
 
Sadly, my brother, a 29 year assembly line veteran at Ford's Norfolk VA F150 plant is about to become a casualty of Ford's mismanagement. They're cutting back (BIG TIME) F-150 production over the next few months and have pushed up the plant closing, which was supposed to be sometime next year. He says he'll be laid off for 3 weeks in September. But, that's been his life with Ford for as long as I can remember, always laid off for 1-2 weeks here and there. Another example of a top-heavy American corporation with overpaid chiefs laying off the people who are actually doing the work. My brother is definitely pro-union, but I'm torn. I'm not sure what they see as 'good for the little guy' has always been good for the company, and if you can't use a little foresight when you make your contract demands, it's not that hard to sink a company without realizing it. Their labor costs are astronomical, but that's true at both ends of their food chain. IMO, some of the 6-figure salaries need to be sh*t-canned near the top before getting rid of the laborers and closing factories. Hard to believe they have had the best selling vehicle for so many years and their economics have come down to this.
 
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Originally posted by brianl703:
Unions also don't engineer **** like the TFI-IV and the self-destructing Taurus transmissions.

Incidentally, I suspect that usage of thermal tape instead of thermal grease between the TFI-IV module and the distributor would have prevented many of the failures.


You had to bring up that self-destructing Taurus transmission, didn't you? I had one of those, in a 1991 Taurus, and knew about this fault a few years into my ownership. This was my low mileage car, not my commuter, and the mileage piled up slowly. I knew about the extended warranty, to 5 years or 60,000 miles, but my transmission did not fail until 1999, at 61,000 miles. I had been having the transmission serviced at least yearly, regardless of how few miles I put on it; one year it was serviced at only the 3300 mile mark. Didn't make any difference, it failed at 61,000 miles. At the time, I was a 3 Ford family, having a Taurus, a Thunderbird, and a Ranger. I am now a no Ford family.

Ford is slashing production mostly in trucks, where their sales are really down. Ford is a long way from bankruptcy, however. A Ford representative, talking about the company's financial situation, stated that they had 24 billion dollars cash on hand, and they expected to have at least 20 billion remaining at the end of this year.
 
Unions aren't the reasons for Ford's and GM's troubles.

Vehicles that less and less people want to buy are the reason.

Whatever the consumer's reasons may be, and they're likely manifold, that's the real reason these two are on the ropes.

But not too many union folks are involved in deciding what vehicles will be designed and built, or what the profit margins will be.

These same U.S. workers seem to build pretty nice Hondas and Toyotas, so it isn't labor's fault.

Ford and GM are seminal lessons in institutional mismanagement

Henry Ford had it right: the employees should earn enough to afford the product they're making.
 
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Originally posted by CBDFrontier06:
Sadly, my brother, a 29 year assembly line veteran at Ford's Norfolk VA F150 plant is about to become a casualty of Ford's mismanagement.

Ford blames traffic conditions in Virginia on that plant closing. They say that it makes it difficult to get supplies to the plant in time.

You know what? I believe them. I see the parking lot that is I95 (even on the weekends) on a regular basis.
 
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Originally posted by 1999nick:
I am now a no Ford family.

Both of mine have manual transmissions.

It's interesting to note that the most expensive part which failed on my Contour--the wiring harnesses--was replaced by Ford for free under an extended 100K, 10 year warranty.

These harnesses were also made by Yazaki (a Japanese company, for those who aren't aware) using the wrong type of wiring insulation for the temperatures the wire is exposed to, leading to degradation of the insulation.
 
Well it is really the Perfect Storm scenario that is killing Ford and GM. You can debate if unions are good or bad. In any case, the fact is they are competing with non-union work force (Japan, Korea, China,...) which is much cheaper, hence higher operating costs for US makers. Moreover, they have steeply increasing liabilities due to the benefits for retiring workers which most others (Asia) companies don't have (young work force and/or smaller benefits).

As if that were not enough, they have both wrong quality level and wrong designs. Oil price just cannot be ignored, which is exactly what Ford is doing. Every time barrel price increases another $10, X number of consumers switch from Ford to a competitor's smaller vehicle. In fact, both Ford and American press ignore smaller vehicles. I guess they are just too boring and cheap?!?!
 
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Originally posted by brianl703:
I'm just glad I don't have to compete with the workforce that lives 20 to a house.

I jus have to pay the taxes to support them.


Huh?
 
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