Quote:
Originally Posted by Bossxr8
It's hard to see the 2 truck factories that are absolutely flat out feeding the North American market 900,000 F series a year, giving a damn about a couple of thousand potential sales in Australia. And having RHD production screw up their factory lay out and supply lines. It's just added complexity they don't want or need. As much as we would all love to see a factory RHD F series, it won't happen. Our only real chance is a factory backed conversion like the Rams and Silverados we get here.
Yes the Bronco Sport is a different vehicle, not based on Ranger. It's more of a jacked up off road Focus I think.
Price is why. The Ranger starts at 24k, the F150 is 28k. And buyers over there are apparently one or the other, few consider both. Difference here would push base F series right into the most profitable Ranger models.
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F Series is built in three plants, F150 at Dearborn and Kansas City AP next door to Transit
while Super Duty is Builtat Kentucky Truck Plant, some chassis cab SDs are built with the
Medium Dutys at Avon Lake but what you say is true, all three main plants are running
three shifts pushing out large pickups as well as Expedition and Navigator.
They really don't want that being disrupted by changes that can be avoided.
Bronco Sport is actually a clever C2 top hat that shares a lot with Escape/Kuga,
built in Mexico and charging a premium over Escape is just pure gravy for Ford.
The whole reason the US resumed Ranger was basically two reasons:
1. A nice price gap opened up below F150 due to the growth in popularity of more expensive crew cabs
2, Replacing unprofitable Focus and C-Max at Michigan AP, more than 85% are high value crew cabs.