Rumormill: Ford converting North American factories to make European cars



For reasons that everyone is aware of, American carmakers have been shutting down and idling plants that make trucks and SUVs. According to AutoSavant, however, Ford is not going to simply shutter plants, it is going to retool some of them to build its Euro-market cars for the American market.

If this is true, we're so giddy we don't even want to paraphrase it, so we'll just quote directly: "Our sources at Ford say that Mr. Mulally has already made the decision to convert at least three truck/SUV production facilities in North America as soon as possible to produce Ford models currently sold in Europe.... The timeline Mulally prefers, according to insiders, is 'yesterday'."

The reasoning is ostensibly that with the American market going to more frugal cars, it's time for Ford to start spending the money to provide them -- even though cash is tight right now. What might make the leap across the water? The Euro Focus, the Focus Coupe, and the C-Max (pictured) are candidates. The Mondeo is, supposedly, not. But it's a start, hey? It only took spiraling gas prices and plummeting truck sales to get us what we have been begging for. If we had known, we'd have done it sooner. Thanks for the tip, Daniel!

[Source: AutoSavant]

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Autoblog Podcast #157: Mike Levine trucks along with us.

Mike Levine from PickupTrucks.com joins Chris, Sam, and Dan this week and gets a chance to talk about cars, too! 

 
 

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