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Article: Plunging pickup sales forced Ford's hand

Article from:
Telegraph - Herald (Dubuque)
Article date:
July 6, 2008
Author:
Copyright

DEARBORN, Mich. - Every morning, just after getting coffee, Mark Fields fires up his laptop to pore over a computer model showing real-time U.S. auto sales figures.

On this morning in the middle of May, the man who heads Ford Motor Co.'s Americas operations has seen enough.

The line on a chart showing subcompact car sales for the first two weeks of the month goes almost straight up. The one for pickup trucks, Ford's biggest profit center, runs almost straight down.

High gasoline prices and the economic downturn are changing the market far faster than anyone anticipated. Without action, Ford would be making too many trucks and not enough cars, a recipe for a balance sheet peppered with ...

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