Pause for effect

Iconic Ford SUV plant to be idled for summer

Posted by Sara Barz at 8:05 AM on 19 Jun 2008

Read more about: business | cars | fuel efficiency | gas prices | Big Auto

Ford relic. Photo: deansouglass via Flickr

Ford will close its Michigan Truck Plant in Wayne for nine weeks -- four weeks longer than previously announced -- starting on June 23. Birthplace to Lincoln Navigators and Ford Expeditions, the MTP has come in for hard times due to the plummeting market for SUVs. Since January, Expedition sales are down 31 percent; Navigators, 22 percent. Once bread and butter for American automakers, SUVs have fallen victim to $4-a-gallon gasoline.

To the lay observer, the temporary MTP closure is just another symptom of the shift away from SUVs, but it actually signifies a whole lot more for American automakers: At the height of the SUV boom in the late '90s, the MTP was the most profitable factory, in any industry, anywhere in the world.

Keith Bradsher, Detroit bureau chief of The New York Times from 1996 to 2001, wrote in his book High and Mighty: The Dangerous Rise of the SUV:

The factory's annual production was worth almost $11 billion -- greater than the global sales in 1998 for Fortune 500 companies like Northwest Airlines, CBS, Texas Instruments, Honeywell, and Nike ...

While Ford had 53 assembly plants worldwide, the Michigan Truck Plant accounted for a third of the company's entire profits.

That tremendous SUV wealth benefited not only the company, but the workers. At the height of the Expedition craze, unionized assembly-line workers at MTP earned as much as $100,000 a year (including overtime). Point of reference: Salary.com calculates (in 2008 dollars) that a similar worker in the 90th percentile earns just over $55,000 a year, with fewer chances for overtime.

As SUV production slows, automakers continue to ramp up production at car factories. General Motors announced Monday that it would add a third shift at its Lordstown, Ohio, plant, which builds Pontiac G5s (25/35 mpg) and suddenly desirable Chevrolet Cobalts (24/33 mpg).

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2 Comments | Post a Comment

Run, don't walk

To buy a copy (only used ones now available) of Keith Bradsher's, High and Mighty: The Dangerous Rise of the SUV. It is a must read for anybody with an interest in the environment, and the power of entrenched interests.

These are only my personal opinions.

by Ron Steenblik at 9:36 AM on 19 Jun 2008

My Ford SUV

My Ford SUV, the Escape Hybrid,

gets 34-35 mpg IN THE CITY
doesn't idle
is in full electric mode at least 1/4 to 1/3 of the time its on
on non-greenhouse emissions: cleaner than any American ICE production vehicle in history, and possibly even cleaner than a Honda Civic
is a candidate for after-market plug-in conversion

Its not perfect, but Ford knows how to make these well. They sell like hotcakes in L.A.

-Christopher S. Johnson

by christophersj at 7:18 PM on 19 Jun 2008

ADVERTISING POLICY

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