Ford made the same decision that GM has made, they offered nice cars from about $13K to over $60K that people do not want, so they will discontinue them here. Not that they cannot be brought back if things change. We are overloaded with cars that offer performance that was a dream in the 60's and early 70's. Our FiST and grannies Camry will according to road tests out run a Shelby GT 500 from the day. And out stop and out handle it for $22K for the FiST. But people here don't want cars. We are programmed bigger is always better........big fine car.......big fine house........biggie size food.......and not a single major update to a model does not include "bigger" in the ad copy. A running joke with a friend is the RAV 4, she bought the original and replaced it with each new model. And complains all the time she hates them compared to her original. The current RAV 4 is huge....and the reason she hates it! Like manual transmissions American buyers have spoken, they don't want cars or to shift. Making cars to compete with the foreign companies is impossible when the US and States give them tax free status that Ford and GM cannot get. VW in TN is a prime example, TN gave what is up to 1 billion in aid so far to build a VW plant that has violated emission laws and in the 4 years since the Union vote have been in Fed courts for violating Labor laws. What's new for VW, they also ignored all the contractual agreements for not hiring contractors or importing German workers.......bad cars, bad company. And we pay them to screw us! All these tax breaks for Foreign car companies need to be outlawed unless we give them to US companies also. The point is it is not profitable for US car companies to build cars in the USA at a competitive price.
Even our FiST's were highly discounted to sell what few they did. Mustang GT's and Fusion Sports can be had deep discounts. A Ford performance car is cheap and the Mustang is the best selling Sports Car in the world and not discontinued. We will be buying my wife a new car this year. Her Stealth R/T will get fully restored and be a garage queen. Her knees will not handle a heavy clutch much any longer. FiST is fine, Mustang clutch is way too heavy for stop and go traffic and she is a clutch destroyer with our hills/Mtns here.
Foreign car companies in the US are anti-union like VW and Nissan. But people need to keep buying Nissan's.....the workers are dying for you to buy non-union cars.
" This is the fourth fatal incident at the Smyrna (TN) Nissan Vehicle Assembly Plant in the past five years. In 2013, Nissan maintenance technician Michael Hooper, 43, was involved in a fatal accident in the body assembly area. Later in 2013, a supplier was killed when a large electrical panel fell while it was being moved. In 2012, a contract driver, Martin O’Connell, was killed when he became trapped between his truck and a set of parked trailers."
Why? No Union to enforce safe workplaces or mandated safety staff, one died at the BMW plant in SC recently. Got "trapped" in a paint booth? Really, no escape door? Sounds like a gas chamber to me, the showers at Auschwitz did not have emergency exits either. Want to bet like the VW plant it is all German machinery? The fine for a dead employee in SC was $29,000. People come cheap to foreign companies it seems and it keeps the car prices down not having to worry about the pesky cost of worker safety. The fine is less than the salary for a safety person, think they will hire one or like Nissan just pay the cheap fines again and again?
Many reasons for both Ford and GM to walk away from the car market...no money to be made is the bottom line. After all they DO pay for safety and other Union benefits like a living wage and health insurance for the family. So buy from American companies, they support their employees, not bury them.
![[:(]](/images/smilies/frown.png "Frown [:(]")
![[mad]](/images/smilies/mad.png "Mad [mad]")
