The Detroit News reported late Tuesday that the company is in contract negotiations with the UAW to bring production of the Ford Ranger to the Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne. Ford employs around 4,500 workers there, and if a deal can’t be worked out, those jobs and the Ranger could both be lost. These higher sale prices leave a large opening for Ford to insert a lesser expensive and more compact truck below the ever-popular F-Series. This plant now assembles the Focus and C-Max but production is slated to move by 2018. “The ones that are available are cashing in on the demand”. Next-generation models will be built elsewhere, leaving Ford with an open factory, and a workforce anxious to know what comes next.
Advertisement
The Ford Ranger pickup could return to the U.S. auto market after a almost seven-year hiatus, according to a report from The Detroit News.
Advertisement
Ford abandoned a segment it dominated between the ’80s and 2000s when it canceled the American version of the Ranger in 2011. Ford hasn’t been importing the Ranger due to the 25-percent tax on foreign-built pickups, better known as the “chicken tax”. Mid-size truck sales have been on a decline for the past decade but recent entries like the new Chevrolet Colorado and its GMC Canyon corporate cousin have seen a slight uptick in the segment’s share of the overall market. There’s nothing an automaker hates more than to be absent from a competitive (and profitable) segment, so if small trucks continue to sell, Ford will have to enter the fray sooner or later. Plus the Ranger would need to be built in America to be priced competitively, and Ford just so happens to have a plant that it needs to keep open. Likewise, speculation about Jeep shopping a new pickup truck concept to its dealership network has some predicting another new midsize pickup (and we’re guessing a very off-road capable one) is on the way; that assumes parent company Fiat Chrysler Automobiles can figure out where to make it.
