Ford Motor Co.’s South Side assembly plant will shift in early 2004 from production of traditional midsize sedans to a new-style sport-utility vehicle that fits into one of the auto industry’s fastest-growing segments, the company plans to announce Wednesday.
Ford said it will revamp the plant at 12600 S. Torrence Ave. into a flexible manufacturing facility that will build a car-based crossover vehicle, code-named the CrossTrainer. Sources said at least one other model will be built there.
To make room at Torrence Avenue, Ford will consolidate production of the Ford Taurus–once the nation’s best-selling car–and Mercury Sable at its Atlanta plant, which also produces those midsize sedans, the company said.
After the conversion, Torrence initially will produce only the CrossTrainer, as a Ford division vehicle, sources said. But a second model–a so-called tall-roof, four-door midsize sedan–is earmarked for the plant, which has capacity to build about 275,000 vehicles annually with overtime. The tall sedan initially also will carry only a Ford nameplate but is expected to add a Mercury version.
Sources said there are no immediate plans to add a Mercury version of the CrossTrainer, which is not necessarily the moniker the production vehicle will carry.
Nick Scheele, Ford president and chief operating officer, is to announce plans for the CrossTrainer to Ford employees Wednesday at McCormick Place South, where a media preview is being held for the Chicago Auto Show.
One plant, several models
For Torrence Avenue, the transition goes far beyond assembling a new vehicle. Preliminary work has begun to convert the 78-year-old plant to flexible manufacturing. When the changeover is complete in 2003, the plant will have flexible tooling that can be reprogrammed to build different vehicles with different designs. It now has fixed tooling designed to produce two models of a similar design.
David Cole, director of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich., said that Torrence Avenue and other inflexible plants have left Ford vulnerable to shifts in consumer demand.
“When you start to run at less than maximum capacity, you start to hurt real bad,” Cole said. “If you can’t build multiple models at the same plant in the future, you’re dead meat. You just have to do it to survive in this market.”
Even with flexible tooling, all models have to share basic architecture, so the tall sedan and other models to be built at Torrence Avenue will be related to the CrossTrainer.
Ford uses flexible manufacturing at some European plants and will convert other North American plants. Japanese manufacturers have operated flexible plants in North America for more than a decade, allowing them to build three or four different vehicles at one site.
Ford spokeswoman Della DiPietro said the number of jobs at the Torrence Avenue plant, about 2,500, “should stay the same, except for normal attrition.” Production capacity also will stay the same.
Site preparation has started on an industrial park near the plant, where about a dozen suppliers will build components for the new vehicles. DiPietro estimates the suppliers will employ 800 to 1,000 people.
A fit for new lifestyles
The CrossTrainer is a member of a new breed of vehicles called crossovers because they combine traits of sedans, vans and sport-utility vehicles into one machine. The result is much like a station wagon that resembles an SUV.
Ford said the vehicle will have three rows of seats, hold up to seven, be offered with front- or all-wheel drive and be powered by a 3-liter V-6 engine with a new continuously variable transmission. A CVT has an infinite number of gears designed to deliver 10 percent better mileage than a conventional automatic transmission.
“CrossTrainer is a lifestyle vehicle that looks like an SUV in a midsize segment moving to lifestyle vehicles,” said Jim Hall, vice president of industry forecasting for auto consultancy AutoPacific Inc. in Southfield, Mich.
“It will be the right product at the right time if the price is right,” Hall said.
Hall said the vehicles to be built at Torrence Avenue reflect a shift in consumer tastes from traditional sedans to more spacious vehicles, including SUVs and mini-vans.
Midsize sedans comprise the largest industry market segment, with 4.1 million sold last year, but car sales are shrinking and SUVs continue a growth curve that began more than a decade ago.
SUV sales climbed to a record 4 million in 2001, and the biggest jump was in car-based SUV models, vehicles like the CrossTrainer and the Lexus RX300, considered the benchmark of the breed.
Ford, which lost $5.45 billion in 2001, has announced it will close five North American assembly plants over the next three years as part of a massive restructuring.
