theoldwizard Posted June 14, 2007 Share Posted June 14, 2007 Associate dPress - Ford to Build Subcompact Car in Brazil Market Watch - Ford to build subcompact car for U.S. market in Brazil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blueblood Posted June 14, 2007 Share Posted June 14, 2007 Unreal.. I wonder with all the money they'll save by building it in Brazil if they'll invest that in makig a quality interoir or will it be absolute shit? I was shocked to see the interiorand dash of the Honda Fit, Ford will have to beat that by 2009-10, no doubt they'll fail horribly.. Brazil.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
igor Posted June 14, 2007 Share Posted June 14, 2007 oh man .. 1) this does not bode well for a DOHC engine .. Brazil uses the SOHC RoCAM exclusively. Oh well .. 2) I think the appointment of HTT to lead Ford Brazil might be exactly BEACUSE of these plans ... make sure the factories churn out good quality products. 3) I would not assign a COUNTRY a quality rating ... the Brazilian VW's were HARDLY the only VW's having problems at that time. 4) Financially - this makes sense if you include the cost of building a new mexican plant into the equation .. even with the unfavorable exchange rate they might have good 10 or more years before they would catch up ./. also the cost of running a new separate plants, might simply offset the costs of importing from Brazil - I surely do not know. 5) I do not think this is as big of a deal as made seem above.. the 2 choices for production were Mexico or Brazil - would you Pioneer be happier with a Mexican Built B-car than a Brazilian one? I would be surprised if your answer was yes. Europe, US and Canada are out of the question. Mazda probably is fully utilized in Japan. India could maybe supply some, but again - would people be happier? Finally .. China was the last option .. Anyways .. I hope we will start getting more information about this car .. but having the production site settled makes this more real - I was actually getting worried that the car is about 24 months away and we have not know where it would be built. Igor Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
igor Posted June 14, 2007 Share Posted June 14, 2007 Unreal.. I wonder with all the money they'll save by building it in Brazil if they'll invest that in makig a quality interoir or will it be absolute shit? I was shocked to see the interiorand dash of the Honda Fit, Ford will have to beat that by 2009-10, no doubt they'll fail horribly.. Brazil.. I believe Ford vowed NOT TO DEVELOP separate interiors for different markets anymore as it saves no money ... so Brazil and US are to get EU interiors .. I hope they deliver. Igor Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joihan777 Posted June 14, 2007 Share Posted June 14, 2007 (edited) Ford to Build Subcompact Car in Brazil Wasn't the guy behind the S197 Mustang sent off to be President of Ford in Brazil? Maybe a good thing, eh? Edited June 14, 2007 by joihan777 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZanatWork Posted June 14, 2007 Share Posted June 14, 2007 Well, it certainly wasn't going to be built in the U.S....not even HondOta can do that profitably. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
igor Posted June 14, 2007 Share Posted June 14, 2007 Ford to Build Subcompact Car in Brazil Wasn't the guy behind the S197 Mustang sent off to be President of Ford in Brazil? Maybe a good thing, eh? The person sent to Brazil was Hai Tau Tang the former chief of SVT .. I am not sure whether he was involved in the S197 Mustang ... Igor Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZanatWork Posted June 14, 2007 Share Posted June 14, 2007 He was rather heavily involved in the Mustang...I think each major car mag did a story on him and his lifelong love of Mustangs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bolita Posted June 14, 2007 Share Posted June 14, 2007 (edited) Seems weird given the current capacity shortage the Ford Brazil has. Ford will have to heavily invest in expanding a plants capacity. Now, I believe that there is an error. Ford would probably use the Camacari plant and not SBC. Camacari is state of art, new - SBC is old and as stated in a more expensive area. SBC is only producing Ka and Courier today and it is getting revamped to launch the B402 Ka replacement. Both use the old Fiesta platform. Camacari produces over 250K Amazon project cars (Fiesta Hatch and Sedan and EcoSport). If I understand it correctly, the next gen B Car will be the basis of all Fiesta and the B car for the US as well, so obviously the better choice is an expanded Camacari. Another thing, Ford's quality out of Camacari is actually pretty good. The quality of the materials (texture and others) may suck but overall they're a lot better than what I had expected for Brazilian cars... Edited June 14, 2007 by bolita Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theoldwizard Posted June 14, 2007 Author Share Posted June 14, 2007 I did a few trips to Sao Paulo, many years ago. It is definitely a different world ! Back then, people really did live in cardboard boxes ! The street were full of garbage and it was not a nice place to visit ! The Ford bus would stop at the entrance to the "slum" (sorry, I don't have a better word for it) and pick up the workers. At the factory, the workers were given a hard bread roll and all of the super strong espresso coffee they wanted, before work started (most could not afford breakfast at home). Lunch was free. Meat, vegetable, beans and rice and bread and all the espresso you wanted. I was told that most of the workers would not eat again until the next day. Sick families rode the bus into work, because the free family medical care was done at the infirmary in the factory. Getting things was next to impossible. We need some coax cable connectors that were non-standard size. In the US we could have them in 2 or 3 days; there 6 or 8 weeks, "maybe". Very little English is spoken anywhere. The salaried employees were required to know English, but it was a challenge for most of them. I hope things are better now ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bolita Posted June 15, 2007 Share Posted June 15, 2007 I did a few trips to Sao Paulo, many years ago. It is definitely a different world ! Back then, people really did live in cardboard boxes ! The street were full of garbage and it was not a nice place to visit ! The Ford bus would stop at the entrance to the "slum" (sorry, I don't have a better word for it) and pick up the workers. At the factory, the workers were given a hard bread roll and all of the super strong espresso coffee they wanted, before work started (most could not afford breakfast at home). Lunch was free. Meat, vegetable, beans and rice and bread and all the espresso you wanted. I was told that most of the workers would not eat again until the next day. Sick families rode the bus into work, because the free family medical care was done at the infirmary in the factory. Getting things was next to impossible. We need some coax cable connectors that were non-standard size. In the US we could have them in 2 or 3 days; there 6 or 8 weeks, "maybe". Very little English is spoken anywhere. The salaried employees were required to know English, but it was a challenge for most of them. I hope things are better now ! That must of been a good many years ago! I've been to Brazil 8 years ago visiting the VW plant in Curitiba. Even though there are slums, for the most part the city was modern and clean. The VW plant was amazin as you crossed into the plant - it was like a European plant. Modern, clean and state of art. Several suppliers were on site (I remember Siemens) and the uniforms of the workers were new and clean. Brazil today is looking at their auto industry creep over 2.2 million units and has been growing very rapidly for the past 3-4 years. The main problem with the industry IMHO is that since demand is so high, all plants are at full capacity thus there is not much pressure to renew models or improve quality of the materials of their output. However, if IIRC, the US Mercedes C class up to recently was sourced out of Brazil. I don't think that it had any quality issues when compared to the German produced model. I am confident that Ford Brazil has the experience and capability of producing a top quality B car for the US. I'm just surprised that Ford did not choose the Cauthiclan (<-- spelling?) plant in Mexico for this venture... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Biker16 Posted June 21, 2007 Share Posted June 21, 2007 That must of been a good many years ago! I've been to Brazil 8 years ago visiting the VW plant in Curitiba. Even though there are slums, for the most part the city was modern and clean. The VW plant was amazin as you crossed into the plant - it was like a European plant. Modern, clean and state of art. Several suppliers were on site (I remember Siemens) and the uniforms of the workers were new and clean. Brazil today is looking at their auto industry creep over 2.2 million units and has been growing very rapidly for the past 3-4 years. The main problem with the industry IMHO is that since demand is so high, all plants are at full capacity thus there is not much pressure to renew models or improve quality of the materials of their output. However, if IIRC, the US Mercedes C class up to recently was sourced out of Brazil. I don't think that it had any quality issues when compared to the German produced model. I am confident that Ford Brazil has the experience and capability of producing a top quality B car for the US. I'm just surprised that Ford did not choose the Cauthiclan (<-- spelling?) plant in Mexico for this venture... I have a theory, I think ford will move the C2 to focus to mexico. and then they may move the B-car with the focus. I don't think Ford can afford to build a new plant for the B-car, so thye build the car in brazil until they can make one mega plant to build the B ad Ccars in. much like nissan did in aquacalintes, building the sentra and versa . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LincolnFan Posted June 21, 2007 Share Posted June 21, 2007 1) this does not bode well for a DOHC engine .. Brazil uses the SOHC RoCAM exclusively. Oh well .. Err... the 1.6 Duratec DOHC isn't that much really... I average about 35 MPG Imperial. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
igor Posted June 21, 2007 Share Posted June 21, 2007 Err... the 1.6 Duratec DOHC isn't that much really... I average about 35 MPG Imperial. well that might be true, but is WAYS better than the SOHC 1.6l RoCam .. Actually you are not driving a duratec 0despite Ford calling it one) - it is a Sigma Zetec engine - also called MZI by Mazda. The RoCam is a version of the MZI. True Duratec is codenamed MZR by Mazda and comes in 1.3l and 1.5l and 2.0l sizes - it is also DOHC but more powerful and efficient (the 1.5l MZR gets the same power and better mileage than the 1.6l MZI).. that is the engine Mazda2 uses and the engine I HOPE Ford OE and Ford NA use in their B's. The 2.0l in the C1 Focus is a MZR .. but the 1.6l is an MZI. Igor Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TStag Posted June 21, 2007 Share Posted June 21, 2007 Interesting there are a few Chinese companies going into Brasil now too. They plan to ship cheap components into Brazil, where cars will be assembled and then sold in the USA. I guess we can expect to see more work go to these places as Ford and co have to not only battle the likes of Toyota but the Chinese car industry. I really think the Chinese will change the game. There are litterally hundreds of Chinese car companies getting ready to build cars and export the US, Europe and Japan had better think up an answer....... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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