Topic: Mulally Making Gutsy Decisions

[MKII]

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http://www.autosavant.net/2008/06/fo...ories-for.html

While DetNews has had some sources about the retooling, Autosavant builds a significantly more detailed stroy with additional insider sources.

The short take?
Mulally has decided to retool AT LEAST THREE US Truck plants to build cars
Luisville will be retoolrd to be an overflow plant for Fusion or Focus (or both) or Focus dericatives.

C1 Focus will be introduced in US very quickly and sold alongside the current US model. The key reason - Hatch, Wagon, and CC bodies not available from the US model. The cars will be sold alongside each other for a period of time before the US focus is discontinued.

Introduction of Focus derivatives: C-Max, and Kuga in short order.

Sped up development of F100, TransitConnect and Transit, alonsigside with sped up introduction of their US assembly sites.

All in all - perfect news.

The sole exception: Mondeo will not make it at this point - even with US assembly it is too expensive. So we will have Fusion for now until their merge in 2012

[PJungnitsch]

Nice! I still don't understand the push for the F100 over the Ranger replacement, but otherwise, top marks.

[carcrazy]

OK. Does he have a timetable for this plan?

He's been talking about this for years, true, not as concrete as now, but we are in 2008 and we are still looking at the fugly Focus as the only Ford small car.
Now it's going to take another 2-3 years until we see the first Euro cars here and by that time they’ll already be old. He should've gone this path from long time ago and today we could’ve had the Euro Focus in North America.

[MKII]

Kuga http://www.rrp.ford.com/servlet/Satellite?c=Page&cid=1189491570283&pagename=MarketingSites/Page/MSFlashTemplate&locale=en-gb
will replace the Escape, and be offered with 2.5l and the 2.5 Turbo for North America.

The MKIII Focus or C2 platform Focus is slated for Euro market as MY2010, and was due in North America MY2011. So I guess now it is possible that North America will have the C1 Focus as a MY2009 and the C2 launched at the same time as Europe as a MY2010.

If Ford N.A. does sell both Focus this will be only for MY2009, with the euro variants offered in hatch, wagon and CC, and the N.A. variants sedan and coupe. Wonder if the ST will be offered to N.A. and also the up coming RS