Ford Said to be Studying Crash-Dive Retooling Program

Ford Said to be Studying Crash-Dive Retooling Program

By Bill Visnic

  In a move that was not entirely unexpected, Ford Motor Co. reportedly is studying a plan to implement a hasty and wide-ranging retooling of many of its North American assembly plants, shifting them from production of large pickup trucks and SUVs to smaller, lighter and more fuel-efficient vehicles.

  The Detroit News reports manufacturing executives and local labor leaders will meet in Dearborn on Friday to discuss the plan, which reportedly centers on retooling several plants from production of traditional body-on-frame pickups and SUVs to models and vehicle architectures currently being used in Europe.

It is a strategy many industry analysts have said must be undertaken by all the truck-reliant Detroit automakers. The only surprise, perhaps, is the haste with which Ford is reacting -- a lightning stroke relative to past Detroit responses to major macroeconomic and consumer-preference shifts.

Trucks as We Know Them a Thing of the Past

The auto industry has buzzed for months about the upheaving "structural" changes being forced on automakers by rapidly changing consumer sentiment -- a shift being driven largely by rampaging fuel prices and ongoing geopolitical pressures regarding energy security and environmental awareness.

Faced with a crippling dropoff in demand for the full-size pickups and SUVs that not long ago were the darlings of a seemingly oblivious and credit-fueled U.S. market, the Detroit Three automakers now must determine how drastically -- and how quickly -- they can realign what's in showrooms with consumer demand that has transformed virtually 180 degrees. Suddenly, consumers are clamoring for small cars that virtually could park in the cargo bed of the pickups they coveted little more than a year ago.

The first thing to "go," it appears, will be the decades-long reliance on hoary body-on-frame architectures on which all current pickups and full-size SUVs are built. The traditional layout has advantages, not the least of which is cost, but generally is considered heavy in relation to unibody architecture -- and is a comparative cul-de-sac in terms of the manufacturing flexibility that allows quick changes to other types of vehicles.

Michael Robinet, vice president, global vehicle forecasts for CSM worldwide, recently told AutoObserver that Detroit's automakers, because of their traditional slant toward body-on-frame architectures, are not as well-positioned as some of their international rivals to quickly adjust to the stampede away from pickups and SUVs.

"I think what you're going to hear is, 'We're moving the ball.'" Robinet said.

"Moving the ball," it seems, is precisely what Ford intends with the reported plan to reconfigure its manufacturing base to build the vehicles people want on platforms that are lighter, smaller and more adaptable.

Change Soon or Die

Detroit's overweight position in body-on-frame vehicles and plants dedicated to their construction may change quickly or the automakers may find themselves once again digging out from under the car-buying public's perception that the Detroit Three only want to sell large, gas-swilling vehicles. The Detroit automakers only recently had begun to be competitive with import nameplates such as Toyota and Honda, which are winning a new breed of environmentally concerned consumers.

Change will come in many ways, but what may be at least as important is the speed Detroit can muster.

Ford already has shown its vision for the next generation of its formerly market-dominating Explorer SUV -- and that vision has unibody construction. By moving away from the body-on-frame underpinnings that always have comprised the Explorer's chassis, Ford hopes the new-age Explorer America (the name of the concept truck) will be lighter and more fuel-efficient. The lighter weight, for example, likely will mean Ford will choose to power the Explorer not with a V8, but with less-thirsty V6s energized by its "Ecoboost" technology tandem of turbocharging and direct-injection fueling.

  And it's become an open secret Ford is studying the design of a smaller, lighter "F-100" alternative to the full-size F-150 lineup that has been its best-seller for as long as many can remember. The F-100 reputedly would continue with a body-on-frame design -- partly to enable manufacturing consistency with a resized new generation of SUVs piggybacking on the platform -- but that thinking, too may change. It's entirely possible, some sources have said, to build a perfectly acceptable "lifestyle" pickup on a unibody chassis.

Unibodies Uber Alles?

The question now may be how far, and how deep, the Detroit automakers want to delve into their truck and SUV lineups to transform them into less profligate unibody vehicles. And how quickly they may concede to a costly makeover of truck plants with the more flexible tooling investment required to make unibody vehicles.

Although it has not been much of a success thus far, Honda has shown what's possible for a unibody pickup with its large-midsize Ridgeline. It is V6-powered, has considerable interior room and acceptable towing ability judged by anything but work-truck standards.

  A few years ago, Chrysler showed a concept pickup, the Rampage, that also leveraged a unibody layout. And more recently, at January's Detroit auto show, Toyota caused something of an outsized buzz with its A-BAT concept, a compact pickup on a unibody structure. The A-BAT was thought by some pundits to be Toyota's early acknowledgement of the trends that now have swamped the U.S. marketplace.

PHOTOS:

1. Redesigned '09 Ford F-150: dead in the water before it's even launched ? (Courtesy Ford Motor Co.)

2. Ford Explorer America concept: unibody structure for a new era. (Courtesy Ford Motor Co.)

3. Toyota A-BAT is the Japanese automaker's interpretation of a unibody compact pickup. (Courtesy Toyota Motor Corp.)

Bill Visnic:  is an AutoObserver Senior Editor. Follow @AutoObserver on Twitter