March 22nd, the last Ford Taurus rolled of the the assembly line here in Chicago. The Torrence Avenue plant will shut down to retool. Mercury Sable production ended in March. Production will move to another Ford Plant ( Georgia ? I think ), meanwhile the Ford 500 and Mercury Montego will begin production once the plant has changed over.
========= Harryface =========
1991 Pontiac Bonneville LE 3800 V6 ( C ), Black/Slate Grey _~_~_~279, 856 miles_~_~_
~_~_~_~_U.S.A._~_~_~_~_~_
~~~The Former Fleet ~~~
89 Cavalier Z 24 convertible
78 Holiday 88 coupe
68 LeSabre convertible
73 Impala sedan
Any idea if they give tours there on Torrence? I've been thinking it'd be very cool to see the cars coming down the line. Especially these new puppies.
A mate of mine had a Taurus (when they were being imported to Australia) Was called the Taurus Ghia. He knows too well about the transmissions he had to get a total of 4 replaced under warranty. Had the Duratec 3.0L V6 in it.
the Taurus wasn't so bad with a 3.0 engine. It's not
Oh Uh Mitsu who? :-p
-- All the best Dan. ... and tonight on the Jerry Springer show "farmers who abuse their hoes"
The 2005 Ford 500, the new Mercury Montego and the 2006 Lincoln Zephyr will be built at Chicago on a version of a Ford chassis first used by Volvo. They will be available with a twin can V6 and offered in AWD and FWD. The AWD has a CVT tranny and the FWD will come with a 6 speed automatic or the CVT. Fords 2005 crossover SUV and the 2006 Lincoln Aviator are the vehicles that will be built on a version of the FORD chassis, first used on the Mazda. Although the last Taurus was built at Chicago that is not the end of the Taurus, it will still be built at Atlanta for fleets for another year of two. The Sable is gone however. As to the Taurus, you are entitled to you opinion but hardly junk vehicle some have described, based on what we have seen of that vehicle over nearly 20 years it was sold. I have seen thousands in corporate fleet service run up as high as 300K
Thats what happens when a car is built mainly for export, it was built to a price and to a standard that the export market expected. Fortunately standards have improved significantly since that dismal failure was produced.
It had nothing to do with it being an export model.
The fundamental problem was that Ford was trying to prepare the EA Falcon and the Capri for production at the same time and they simply did not have the people resources to do it properly.
Holden had even demonstrated the same problem with the Commodore and the JB Camira about 5 years earlier!
In the early stages of the development of the VT / project 127, I asked one of the American engineers how many platforms GM in the US built, expecting maybe half a dozen or ten.
He started listing them off, counting on his fingers. When he came back to the first hand at 11, I was surprised. By the time he had finished, he was back again. It was just over 20.
When you've got the resources to design and build 20 different platforms each with a life of about 10 years, you can shuffle resources around from one year to the next to suit your needs.
When you build a single platform with a life of about 10 years, you already have serious fluctuations in your requirements for engineers over that 10 year cycle. If you then try to prepare two platforms for release at about the same time, you are going to seriously overstretch yourself.
Holden did it in the early 1980s and Ford repeated the lesson.
I seem to remember the Capri project was very rushed and they had a lot of problems meeting deadlines, I don't know what Ford Australia's contract obligations were when delivering the Capri but if they are anything like Toyotas contract with the Saudi's failing to meet a delivery deadline can result in the cars being delivered FOC.
Capri went into production something like 18 months late. Capri always had a sunset because even when it was designed changes to the FMVSS were on the horizon which would end it.
It wasn't so much rushed by shortage of time as shortage of engineering capacity. But you've snipped the explanation about that...
That is true after a mate of mine having 4 of them replaced! And Ford Australia was blaming him for the problem. And I have been in the car with him countless of times and he drives like a bloody granny. The rest of the car was fine just the transmission was bloody dismal. Bet they make it out of the lowest grade materials known to man kind.
-- All the best Dan. ... and tonight on the Jerry Springer show "farmers who abuse their hoes"
Leave politics out of this please. Also, I think your broad generalizations of customers of the big 3 are quite shortsighted and unfair. Not that that can't be a factor for some but that's not the only page in the book. I mean you could also say that people who buy rice do so on the reputation that rice is always of better quality even though it's not the 1970s and 1980s anymore. You could say that but it wouldn't be fair either.
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I like the Mustang GT because it will blow the doors of anything in its price range, not because it American made. To buy anything domestic or foreign that will beat it, you need to spend up to $10,000 more and that's un-American ;)
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