Ford cuts production of 5 models after aluminum plant fire: WSJ

00:00 Speaker A

Two of Detroit’s Big Three automakers are ramping up production plans, and Yahoo Finance’s Pras Subramanian joins us with the latest. Pras,

00:07 Speaker A

It’s so nice to see you. Let’s start with Ford.

00:10 pras

Yes, you know, the automaker, so we heard about the fire at the Novellas Auto plant in New York. This is a big problem, isn’t it? More than half of the industry’s aluminum supply comes from the Novellas plant, and Ford is the largest user of aluminum with its F-150 franchise featuring all-aluminum body panels.

00:27 pras

The Journal now reports that three-row SUVs are also affected. There is no comment from Ford yet on this issue, but Ford is trying to alleviate some problems with other options. But, you know, other automakers rely on aluminum parts to save weight for suspension systems and things like that. This will affect many automakers here and there doesn’t seem to be a solution for this yet.

00:46 Speaker A

Now you know I’m a Ford guy. officially.

00:48 pras

I know, so apparently Ford is a big part of the family.

00:51 pras

And Ford is big on off-roading, right? It’s part of the job

00:52 Speaker A

I went with the Bronco. Let’s talk about what Bronco’s strategy is, shall we?

00:56 pras

So yeah, we can talk about the F-150, we can talk about three-row SUVs, we can talk about the Bronco. We’re talking about Ford CEO Jim Farley talking about how he wants to make exciting cars, he wants to be the Porsche of off-roading, right?

01:08 Speaker A

What does this mean? What does Jim mean when he says this? Porsche off-roader?

01:12 pras

So basically the Raptor wants to have products like the Bronco Raptor. A great looking car. F-150s are rocking, right? These are cars that you can take anywhere off-road and also participate in motorsport. And he thinks that’s where Ford should be. The product has to be in exciting places and it also has to do things like make headlines to win, right? This will be reflected in the products and get people excited about buying them. He says he doesn’t want to build boring cars. But on the other hand, you still need to sell volume, right? And these are, for lack of a better word, boring cars, right? So we’re going to focus on these off-road adventures, these Mustangs on the racetrack, but we’re also going to sell a lot of these Explorer SUVs, Bronco sports, not your Bronco, and things like that.