With the slowing economy, automakers are struggling to maintain the momentum of new car sales. But other problems also have hampered automakers, including the prevalence of aging, lackluster products. Ford is one automaker that is hoping to eliminate that problem as they are planning on refreshing nearly its entire global lineup by 2012.
Nearly 90% of Ford lineup will soon be refreshed, or all-new according to a Ford Kansas City dealer. Fueling this initiative is a newly adopted strategy of having a single global product lineup which a San Diego used Ford dealer says will streamline operations and make Ford a stronger company. This will eliminate overlapping models that have separate platforms and it will ultimately reduce costs.
Ford has not followed in the footsteps of GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy restructuring, but one Ford dealer specializing in used cars Denver admits the automaker has not been without its fair share of problems. Ford is hoping that its new global lineup strategy will allow the financially troubled automaker to get out of the red by 2011. Thanks to its global lineup, it will soon benefit from reduced development and manufacturing costs as redundancies will eventually be eliminated.
Ford has long developed different vehicles for different regions around the world. While this strategy has its benefits, it has not paid off in a time of adverse economic challenges. One benefit of this new strategy is that American consumers will soon receive vehicles that have been previously out of reach, such as the recently redesigned Ford Fiesta which is already on sale in Europe and will become available in the States late next year.
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Get the latest on Ford new vehicles on this Ford blog.
