Ford to Increase Production 10%
With the its neighbouring automakers floundering, Ford has remained a relatively stable ship in Detroit’s stormy seas; repeatedly turning down government loans while steadily gaining ground in the form of market share for six of the past seven months.
Not surprisingly then, with Chrysler’s assets having recently been divided and GM filing for Chapter 11, Ford has announced they will be upping overall production by 10% for the third quarter. That correlates to a total Q3 production of 460,000 vehicles over last year’s 418,000. However, that difference will be more dramatically felt in the truck market, since Ford has announced that it will actually be scaling back production of their passenger cars from 184,000 to 150,000.
A risky move in the face of rising gas prices (again), the decision to dramatically increase truck could be credited to the massive increase in development and construction caused by Obama’s stimulus plan, as well as the knowledge that this may be the best time to engender some new truck buyers to the Ford badge; a worthwhile investment since truck buyers have continuously proven themselves the most loyal.
