Ford Faqs

Ford motor company has been in deep thought and must decide soon whether or not they will be making a next generation Ranger. The Ranger and other compact pick-up trucks are made at the Twin Cities plant located in Minnesota, which is planning to close late next year. Ford has decided to close the plant in order to follow with the Way Forward North America restructuring plan.

Ford could design a new Ranger and build it at another of its flexible manufacturing plants. Or the automaker could take advantage of its pickup plant in Thailand, the second-biggest pickup market in the world, after the U.S. The problem is that, in the absence of a free trade agreement between the two countries, high tariffs on trucks exported from Thailand to the U.S. essentially wipe out potential profits.

The third alternative is to ldiscontinue the Ranger altogether. Ford compact pickup sales fell 24 percent to 92,000 in 2006, and are pacing down another four percent through May of this year. We would not be surprised to see Ford just exit the segment altogether, much like it did when its minivan sales tanked. And small pickups are an even-less vibrant segment than minivans, with fewer than 617,000 total domestic small pickups sold in the U.S. last year, according to Ward’s Automotive Reports.

With modern-day, cash-strapped Ford pulling out of segments not earning their keep, we asked Fields if Ford ultimately will remain a full-line automaker, or a more strategic player. His less-than-satisfying answer: Ford will be a strategic full-line automaker, picking its shots. Does that mean mid-size SUVs are also on the endangered list? Fields talks like a next generation of mid-size SUVs will happen, despite the trend to car-based crossovers.

He says while the SUV segment is shrinking, it still is substantial, and the Ford Explorer remains No. 1. While more study is going into consumer needs, Fields says he thinks buyers still require towing capacity and the ability to go off-road, in addition to having room for a number of people and their stuff. “We will take that into account as we develop our next generation,” he says at a product event at the Dearborn proving grounds. “It’s important to have a wide product range,” Fields says, but each product must fit logically in the lineup and be profitable.

Whatever Ford decides to do with the Ranger for North America, it will not impact the Ranger for Europe and Asia. The automaker showed an all-new 2007 Ranger pickup for Europe at the 2006 Paris auto show. Developed with Mazda Motor Corporation, the smaller pickup, which uses a 2.5-liter common-rail diesel engine mated to a five-speed manual transmission, was engineered in Japan and is built in Thailand, on a separate platform, for the European and Asian markets. The only thing the new Ranger shares with the ancient North American model is its name.