Nobody has brought this up yet.
The latest Autoweek has a short article on the restructuring at Ford.
According to the article, they are concerned about the costs for the
roll out of the Sierra/Tempo replacements. They have decided to
eliminate the European car operation and instead create the Passenger
Car Operation. This means that there will be a single design for
future chassis development. In addition, Jaguar will become a
division under this organization and that future Jaguar products will
share drivetrains and chassis with other divisions (i.e. badge
engineering).
Guess we all knew it was coming, but its still sad to see it in
writing. In addition to the Jaguar fiasco, I guess this means an end
of Ford of Europe as a competitive marketforce. I own a Merkur
(Sierra) XR4ti and have had many opportunities to compare it with the
equivelent Tempo. The tastes between Europe and the US market appear
to be quite different, and I don't see how the european market could
possibly put up with the garbage we sell over here. Compare this with
the statements in the same magazine by BMW that they are starting to
pour money into the new MG so development can be speeded up.
Sigh, Jay
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Jay Nemeth-Johannes 87 Merkur XR4ti
Hewlett-Packard 83 VW GTI
VXI Systems Division 71 Saab Sonett
Loveland, Colorado 58 MG ZB Magnette
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