Closing the door on an empty barn

By BJ

It's nice to see that Ford is moving to small cars and away from trucks and SUV's, but the New York Times is wrong to call this a big bet.

The struggling automaker, reacting to what it sees as a rapid and permanent shift in consumer tastes brought on by high gas prices, plans to unveil its new direction on Thursday, when it will report quarterly earnings.

Among the changes, Ford is expected to announce that it will convert three of its North American assembly plants from trucks to cars, according to people familiar with the plans.

And as part of the huge bet it is placing on the future direction of the troubled American auto industry, Ford will realign factories to manufacture more fuel-efficient engines and produce six of its next European car models for the United States market.

Reacting after the fact isn't a big bet, it's an attempt at survival. The big bet was sticking to the gas-guzzlers for as long as they did, hoping that cheap gas would remain indefinitely. They lost their gamble, the only question is whether or not they lost too much to recover and play catch up to the Toyota's of the world who made the real gamble on small vehicles that's now really starting to pay off.

Comments

[geoff]

BJ have you seen this gem from GM:

http://tinyurl.com/5osyyf

The bloody Camaro. I'm not sure whether it's a bend in GMs road to hell or just a very, very, very large cul-de-sac sign. Boasting of 9 litres per km (how we express things in the metric system which converted, I think, is about 26 miles per US gallon) in 2010.

I think they maybe finished. Too bad I'm an ex-GM apprentice (I was a millwright prior going to university and grad school but still have my papers and tools - why are you renting that large storage room anyway?) and still have a soft spot for some of what a large corporation, dragged of course by the UAW/CAW, can actually do for individuals if not communities.