Ford to focus on shared parts.

[and]

Klipper og limer da dette visstnok er noe reg å les..

 

Ford to focus on shared parts

By James Mackintosh in Athens

Published: October 3 2004 20:35 | Last updated: October 3 2004 20:35

 

Ford Motor is to share basic components between its European large cars and models from Volvo and Mazda, after an experiment with common parts for small cars saved almost $200m from annual production costs and reduced investment by $65m.

 

The company is also considering how far Jaguar, its loss making luxury brand, should be included in the project, which is called Global Shared Technologies. Past attempts to save money by producing Jaguars using the platforms that underlie the Ford Mondeo and a US Lincoln model have resulted in criticism of the resulting cars.

 

Mark Fields, head of Ford's European operations, said the company had started work on a suite of systems that would be used as the base for the replacement for the Volvo S80 and the Mondeo large saloons. Mazda engineers are also involved, and the Mazda 6, Mazda MPV and the Ford Galaxy minibus are all likely to be based on the same set of technology. He said: “We have got to leverage the scale of Ford Motor Company.”

 

Ford, in common with other carmakers, retreated from attempts to build cars from common platforms after they resulted in different brands producing similar cars. The Jaguar X-Type was particularly criticised for being based on the Ford Mondeo, which meant that it could not have rear-wheel drive.

 

As a result the company is cautious about whether to include the X-Type in the new development, fearing that the replacement for Jaguar's highest-volume car could again be tainted by the “sales rep” image of the Mondeo.

 

“The Jaguar has to be authentic,” said one former senior Ford executive. “Any hint that a Jag is based on a Ford and you havegot problems with the customer.”

 

The company has also avoided including the US at the core of the sharing plans, fearing that extending collaboration so far would slow the project and result in too many design compromises.

 

But the company believes its new approach sharing technologies but not the restrictions of common underbodies has produced distinctive cars that handle differently while also providing economies of scale.

 

The first application of the shared technology approach was with the Ford Focus in Europe, which shares up to 70 per cent of parts with the C-Max people carrier and more than half of its components with the similarly-sized Volvo S40 and the Mazda 3.

 

“We have a Volvo S40 that drives, looks and feels like a Volvo,” Mr Fields said. “We have the Ford C-Max that is aligned with Ford and we have a Mazda that is definitely a Mazda.”

 

Kilde: The Financial Times