A HEAVY LOAD Will new-look truck carry Ford to solid ground?

The company's future lies in its new F150.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
NORFOLK, Va. -- William Clay Ford Jr. turned the key to his company's future Tuesday as he drove out the widely anticipated remake of the top-selling F150 pickup truck.
This tough truck is expected to pull Ford back into solid profitability as the Dearborn, Mich., automaker celebrates its centennial and heads into the next 100 years.
"Our future starts here and it starts now," the chairman and chief executive said to a cheering crowd of UAW members and local officials, including Virginia Gov. Mark Warner.
"This is a make-or-break for Ford," independent automotive consultant MaryAnn Keller told Reuters news service. "This is without a doubt the most crucial product that they've got coming in the last five years and going forward for the next five years. This has to succeed. They have to make it work."
Costlier to build
The Norfolk plant, which won the J.D. Power award for top new-truck quality despite the distraction of a racially charged labor dispute, is the first of three that will make the new F-Series pickup.
The stylish new truck is estimated to cost $1,000 to $2,000 more to make than the current model, which has sold an average of 800,000 annually over the past five years, but Chairman Ford said the refined interior and variety of the models would counter the strong offerings from General Motors Corp., DaimlerChrysler AG's Dodge brand and, later this year, the Nissan Titan.
"We knew that everybody was coming at us. That is why it was so important that we got this one exactly right, and we did," he said.
Current F150s have a sticker price ranging from about $19,000 to $34,000. Pricing for the new truck has not been set.
The first new pickup -- a red F150 SuperCab Lariat with no price on the sticker -- also contained the 100,000,000th V8 engine in Ford's history. The 5.4-liter, 3-valve Triton engine was built at the Essex Engine Plant in Windsor, Mich.
Manufacturing system
Thanks to a $375-million Ford investment, supported by a modest $12 million in subsidies and incentives, this 78-year-old plant -- which started building Model T's in 1925 -- is the first to use Ford's new flexible manufacturing system, which will be in half of Ford's North American plants by mid-decade, three-fourths by the end of the decade.
The plants will be able to adjust their output to produce any of up to nine models on two platforms, said Roman Krygier, Ford's group vice president for manufacturing and quality.
Best of all, the equipment costs 12-percent to 15-percent less than traditional robots, tools and other gear, he said, plus costs of model changeovers will be cut in half. Ford expects to save up to $2 billion over the next 10 years.
"I view this as no less than a revolution in the way we make cars and trucks," Krygier said.
Kansas City and Dearborn truck plants will also make the new F150 pickups. The Oakville, Ontario, truck plant will continue to make the current version, to be called the F150 Heritage starting in the 2004 model year, until it closes next summer. Ford is also using the Heritage name on a limited-edition F150 it is selling to commemorate its centennial year.
The numbers
Ford has sold more than 27.5 million F-Series pickups since 1948; it has been the best-selling truck in America for 26 years and the top-selling vehicle in America for 21 years.
After losing $6.4 billion over the last two years, Ford earned $800 million in the first quarter of this year, though it expects to earn less than that over the rest of the year.