"O", by the way, ford said thier going to have acouple more small cars by the end of the decaide and Alan liked the pinto as much as the taurus hee hee.

 

"it's as useless as nipples on a bore hog and for a 4 door family sedan"

Obviously never drove a mid 80s Chevy Chevette with AC. That is a 4 door family sedan, so they said. And in my opinion a death trap if you had to get up to freeway speed sometime today.

HP isn't just for going fast, it is for getting up to speed quickly and often safely. I remember back in the 70's, mfg's were touting 0-60 in less than 16 seconds. Ever try to merge on a busy fast freeway with short ramps with a 0-60 in 16 type car? Tons o fun. Nope. I would much rather merge on the freeway with too much hp and torque than not enough.

There is a reason why even modest econo cars now a days can out accelerate better than almost any mid to late 70s performance car, the public likes the kick in the pants.

But that said, the 500 as I mentioned has "adequate" power, so you won't get stomped by the Peterbuilts all the time, but then you may not have any fun either.

For many of us the acceleration is the fun. High speed is just frosting which you can't eat very often.

Just my lawbreaking(no 55 stay alive for me) acceleration addicted opinion,

Jim not PC Henderson

 

Looks like ford's one step ahead of you http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a.../1147/BUSINESS

 

This is what the real problem with the situation is fellas- The home of the old taurus and sable is empty. Ford has simply found a nice way to outsource to cheap labor.The 500 is built in mehico( no I didn't mis-spell that).To many that won't matter but to those of us in ATL, thats just plane old crap. If ford wants this car to really sell and make it back to the top they need to prove to the consumer that they care about americans having jobs and that we can build it better than anyone in the world instead of trying to save a buck. I support ford because everyone of their products I own was built when they still used steel and not all parts were "hecho en mehico" or in canada. I haven't bought a ford since '98 and it was a '91 model and I won't untill the company can prove to me that they care about the people that have built them to what they are, where's Henry when you need 'em? On another note- have you ever noticed that "CARS" in america with numbers for names never sell well or become top sellers? I believe the name will make a difference cause people like having a name, not a number. while I have driven the 500 I think ford is focusing on the wrong car with this one, the fusion is their taurus of the future if they'll handle it right. Just an opinion!!!

 

First off, 150 hp focus st will get you up to speed or in to traffic plenty fast as will a 200 hp taurus, 210 hp jeep liberty and a 207 hp ranger. Even my old 130 hp zx2 would flat larse fly. 2nd of all, I just read a report that said ford and gm use 80& of american sourced parts in thier cars as does toyota on thier american built products, they were the top 3. Ford has been building vehicles in Windsor for many years and no one was crying, whats all the excitement about Mexico all of the sudden? Let the UAW move to Mexico and I'm sure they would get that plant shut down as well. I wish we could keep all of our jobs here and get the pride back we once had. The foreign auto makers building here don't have to deal with the UAW, so the big 3 have to do what they can to compete, or little 3, whatever they are now.

 

The reason Ford introduced the 500 in the first place is simple. It was designed and built to replace the aging Crown Vic, a car that has changed little since 1979. The 500 is a much larger car than the Fusion.

The original name for the 500 was supposed to be Futura, a name Ford first used on the Lincoln Futura Dream Car in 1954, and later on Falcons and Fairmonts. Ford let the name pass on after 1983. Pep Boys then adopted it to a line of tires. When Ford approached Pep Boys seeking permission to use the Futura name, Pep Boys refused.

Steel is heavy. Today, there is an acronym foisted on the American public by our government called CAFE. No, that's not an eatery, it stands for Corporate Average Fuel Economy. In order for Ford (and everyone else) to reach the current standards, plastics and composites have replaced steel in cars and trucks. These materials must be used to meet the standards.

Hecho en Mexico. It's a must today to remain competitive. The Japanese, German and Korean auto makers have many plants in the US. Of those, only one...the shared GM Toyota factory in Fremont CA is a UAW shop. The rest of the plants are non union. How can Ford, GM and Chrysler compete in the US market with the added costs the UAW has? They can't. The health care and other factors adds an average of $1500.00 dollars to every vehicle built under UAW tuteledge in the US. Meanwhile, the "foreign" automakers have no such costs. This gives them a huge advantage in the US market.

I blame our government and the UAW for allowing the "foreign" companies to come here and build, build, build factory after factory hiring non union workers. Why did the the US and the UAW allow this to happen? If these factories were UAW controlled, how successful do you think Toyota, Nissan, Honda et al would be at selling cars in the US?

Think about it before you blame Ford, GM and Chrysler for the current sorry state of affairs affecting their sales in the US market. It's not all their fault!

 

Very well put numberDummy, if the UAW were in yoda and honda, we would see a different piture. Also, I just read on blue oval news, that the sable is comming back as well. I guess I'm an old timmer, cuase I like the montego name, brings back memories, more in the back seat than the front ha ha. The freestyle is going to be called the taurus X, I guess ole Alan loves that taurus name.

 

Please take note: the Five Hundred, Montego and Freestyle (all based on the same platform) are built in Chicago. The Fusion is built in Mexico. I own the Freestyle, and I love it. All wheel drive, seating for seven, greater cargo capacty than the Explorer, very solid handling, the highest crash-test ratings and good mpgs (especially on the highway). The Five Hundred family of cars is an under-utilized asset in the product line, Ford needs to market their product better. I also think they should have made the Fusion the new Taurus, and just not used the Fusion name at all. But at any rate, I just hope Ford can increase it's sales and profits pronto.

 

Very good points. The playing field is not level as long as GM and Ford have these huge legacy health care/labor costs of the UAW. However the government did more than just simply allow foreign car companies to build factory after factory -- they passed laws forcing them to do so. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it was in the 80's if I remember it correctly when Congress mandated that Japanese car companies needed to have a certain percentage of their cars made in the USA or face increased tarriffs on their imported cars. Perhaps the UAW encouraged this, thinking that the workers hired would be union workers, or at least demand to organize and join the UAW once hired, but it did not turn out that way.

 

I remember the Japanese companies "voluntarily" cutting back on sending cars/trucks here in the 1980's, after the Big 3 complained to the US Government. I am not aware that Congress could/did tell a foreign automaker to build plants here. For the Japanese, that was just good business sense.

For the UAW to assume that the Japanese or anyone else would hire their workers for their new US factories if they didn't have to..tells me the UAW had lost touch with reality. The only reason that Ford, GM and DCX are building offshore is to break the UAW..and that will happen..sooner or later once offshore plant facilities reach maximum production. You can bet your bottom dollar that machine tools/robots/etc are at some of the offshore factories right now..just in case. (offshore=Mexico and Canada included)

I was also unaware that the 500/Montego's were built in Chicage. I didn't think they were built in Mexico, tho. I just wasn't sure where they were built. I do know that the Chicago plant was the other factory that built the Taurus/Sable besides the one in Atlanta.

 

Tariffs. Interesting, because no tariffs were imposed in the 1950's when the flood of European cars (most were awful) first arrived in the US en masse.

There was talk in the mid to late 60's of adding tariffs to all the foreign stuff. I recall the Big 3 just laughing them off..saying only 5-10% of them would find a market here..and they wouldn't last...using the 1950's as an example. Honda, and Datsun (Nissan) came here around 1966-70 for the first time. Toyota had set up a minor dealer network here in 1959 to sell the Toyopet. It was a complete and abject failure. The Big 3 were aware of the Toyopet, and might of figured that whatever Japanese car was sold here, it wouldn't be for long.

The Big 3 found out during the first gas crunch in the 70's just how wrong they'd been. The time to act with tariffs was then...so why were none imposed?

Toyota did a smart thing in 1966. Someone in Japan had their thinking cap on. Studebaker folded in March 1966. Toyota sent road men nationwide signing up many of the former Studebaker dealers who now had no product to sell. This gave Toyota an instant dealer network of over 1000 outlets nationwide.

There are still two original 1966 Toyota dealers in the LA area that were once Studebaker dealers. One of the largest Honda/Subaru/Chevrolet dealers in the US is owned by the son of the former Studebaker president!

 

First off, good topic!

Why are you blaming the government for allowing new jobs to be created and it turn helping to boost the ecomony?

Bottom line, the "big 3" and the UAW have made their own beds and now they have to sleep in them. ( the best analogy I can come up with )

The bottom line, the UAW isn't involved with Toyota, Nissan, or Honda ( please correct me if I'm wrong ) and that's a big reason why they are doing fairly well now. And don't forget that they all sell some good vehicles, that's what's makes the money. How many people do you know that will not buy a brand of car because a UAW worker didn't build it? Probably not many.

What I compare this logic to is the old " well if Chevy supercharged the LS1 it could beat a Terminator Cobra" and "if Grossman wasn't intercepted the Bears might have won"..... get where I'm going with this?

 

My post refered to a time long before one foreign automaker had built a factory here.

Read my post again Sir, not once did I say anything about costing one American a job. Quite the contrary. Y'all should know me better by now!

I'm not blaming the government now...I'm blaming the government, the Big 3 and the UAW back in the 1960's and later 1970's by allowing the Japanese to get a foothold here....Scott Free. They could have imposed tariffs...after all, while the Japanese were selling product here tariff free, it was not (and still isn't) true in Japan, where the US automakers had to pay huge tariffs to sell their product there.

Fair is fair...vehicles sold here should have been under the same restrictions as they were sold in Japan. If something had been done once, if the Big 3 and the UAW had given a damn, maybe our economy inre to the Auto Biz wouldn't be reeling from all the crappola it's under today.

Since Japanese, et al are well established here now, and have built or are building new plants, which employ US workers. I have no problems with that at all.

 

Just to nitpick a little, I'm pretty sure it was the Fusion that was originally named "Futura".

And IIRC the matter of naming rights actually went to litigation, with the court ruling in favor of Pep Boys.

 

Hmm, not gonna argue...well not too much. But I seem to remember Ford planning on having two Futuras....the plain Jane, and the upscale Futura 500. After the Pep Boys fiasco, only the 500 portion of the name remained.

But, I admit that my memory is not too good on the subject, and I'm not going to dig through piles of old Automotive News' to prove one way or t'other. It's a moot point anyway.

I still like the Lincoln Futura Dream Car from 1954 the best...now better known thanks to George Barris, as the original Batmobile.