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Ford Retooling Plant For Small Cars

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The Associated Press

Published: August 27, 2008

WAYNE, Mich. - Demand for Ford Motor Co.'s Focus and other small cars has been superheated since gas prices headed toward $4 a gallon in May, and since then, Ford hasn't been able to build the Focus quickly enough.

On Tuesday, though, the automaker took two steps toward further cranking up Focus production, announcing that it would sink $75 million into the body-making part of an SUV factory next door to the Wayne Assembly Plant, where the Focus is built.

If demand stays strong, the SUV plant will quickly start producing Focus bodies, eliminating a bottleneck that is slowing production.

The struggling automaker also is sending the SUV factory's 1,000 workers to the Focus plant in January to add a third crew to production lines, also helping to boost production.

In July, Ford announced plans to convert the Michigan Truck plant in Wayne from its current products, the giant Lincoln Navigator and Ford Expedition SUVs, to small cars in 2010. It's part of Ford's effort to shift three factories from trucks to cars to match consumer demand, which has rapidly moved away from trucks and SUVs with gas prices about $4 a gallon.

Because of sagging demand for SUVs, Ford temporarily closed Michigan Truck for 10 weeks during the summer, but it's scheduled to resume production next week. It will build trucks into November, when Ford will start pulling out part of the machinery and moving it to the Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville, which will build the big SUVs starting in the second quarter next year. The plant in Louisville will continue to build F-series Super Duty pickups.

Because of a $300 million investment in a new flexible body shop made in 2005, Michigan Truck can be converted, at relatively small expense, to make small-car bodies, Bill Russo, Ford's director of manufacturing operations, said during a plant tour Tuesday.

About 80 percent of the machinery that assembles bodies will stay at Michigan Truck and be converted to build small cars, Russo said. Robots at the plant merely have to be reprogrammed, he said. The rest of Michigan Truck can be converted almost as easily, although Ford would not say how much it will spend to change the whole plant.

Once the body shop tooling is sent to Kentucky, Michigan Truck can be refitted to make small car bodies in six to eight weeks, said Russo.

But consumer demand will ultimately decide if it will be needed for that purpose.

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