No new Ranger. Ford's apparently going to import a small truck from either South America or Asia.

Yep.


Sounds plausable. But I'm sure it's more to it than that.

 

I love it.

The more things change, the more they stay the same!

It's all about the quick buck with American culture and stockholders.

While Toyota, Honda, et al were making back in the day waves by making a consistently better product, the big 3 made crap off the assembly lines that you'd have to replace once out of warranty. Rather than make a better product for a few pennies more in certain cases, **** everyone off with a recall.

Now, instead of welcoming the consumer back to the dealerships with reasonable prices and great service as said dealerships suffer from tarnished reputations, just jack prices up for a quick buck. It's getting to the point that the educated consumer performs the work on their own. Blow a plug out of that Lightning head? Find anyone BUT a dealer to fix it. Snap a plug in that F150 3-valve head? The TSB is right there online along with the demo video. A dealer tech won't do it any better as that is an 8-hour job for less than 8-hour pay.

Awesome.

 

There's a replacement.
I know somebody who was just awarded a contract to make parts for it.


Sit tight. You'll hear about it soon.

 

Last year, Ford implemented a program intended to integrate their suppliers more into their internal operations on a daily basis. (I linked it in this forum back then.) The program invites feedback from suppliers as well as giving feedback to suppliers from Ford (typically non-compliance or quality complaints). It has been a great success. I can honestly tell you that the company I work for along with all the other tier-1s we associate with LOVE doing business with Ford right now - when compared to the others. The toughest nuts to play with are the Japs... Honda and Toyota think their sh1+ don't stink and they expect perfection... even though they are not capable of delivering it themselves.

Ford is being "improved" by both external supplier relations, and also internally from empowerment and employee involvement. They are still very consciencious about cost and wanting to be thrifty, but cost alone is not the final decision. I certainly think it helps that they are not spitting out maximum quantity on vehicles that are destined for fleets and rental lots. That allows them to up-content vehicles for consumer appeal and get better leverage on the higher content goods.

Of course, designing and building a better product from the groud-up doesn't hurt anything either, and I honestly do think Ford is concentrating on problem-free designs right now. The long string of new releases since 2005 with virtually no recalls tells us they did their homework from the start.

All-in-all, it goes back to the old addage... "If I am building it, I should build it like I am going to be the one that buys it."

 

Well if you use the new tundra as a metric, thats not saying much

 

arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre they from India?

 

so the Thai Ranger?

 

Interesting - and something I can't agree with. If you would have asked anyone in our company who the "easiest" customer is, we would answer "Honda" almost to a person. Yes, they're technically demanding, but they don't jerk us around. Ford was by far and away the worst when we walked away from them a couple of years ago; now, it sounds like they've really turned around their supplier relations (and as such, we're talking to them again).

The most difficult OEMs are the Germans - technically demanding to the point of asking suppliers to defy physics, and making changes up until the very last minute (and sometimes well after launch). An experience with a German luxury OEM a few years back was pretty much the polar opposite of how the Japanese evolve a product, and all of the late changes had us doing a large amount of hand fabrication on the line during the first months of production