You’re missing the point - In 1999, Explorers and other midsize SUVs made up the vast majority of SUV+CUV sales. Small CUVs made up just a small fraction.

Today, the CUV craze is focused on small CUVs in terms of sales - larger vehicles like the Explorer only sell at a fraction of their old volumes. So when people are…

It is the size that people are buying, though. Back during the SUV craze, Ford was selling ~430,000 Explorers per year. CR-V and Rav4 sales barely were topping 100,000 per year and had the small CUV market basically to themselves.

Now the vehicles in the CR-V/Rav4/Escape size market dominate total CUV/SUV sales and the…

Exactly.

1999 Ford Explorer 2WD w/ V8 (common then): 15 mpg combined
1999 Toyota Camry I4 : 23 mpg combined.
2016 Ford Escape 2WD w/ 1.6L (common now) : 26 mpg combined
2016 Toyota Camry I4 : 28 mpg combined.

At $4 per gallon and 10,000 miles per year, your costs would be:

1999 Explorer: $2667
1999 Camry : $1739
2016 Escape…

361,111 lost souls bought Camrys?

Not that great of a price, really. I got blades cheaper than this from the dealer. If I was willing to wait longer, I could easily beat this price from other sources.

And all of these are expensive compared to the old inserts. Why the hell don’t we still have those? They were a LOT cheaper and there was a lot less…

Not that great of a price, really. I got blades cheaper than this from the dealer. If I was willing to wait longer,…

Too bad that index isn’t worth the paper it is printed on - it uses a completely arbitrary cutoff for domestic content percentage, doesn’t even consider white collar jobs at all, and reorders vehicles based on sales numbers. The first year the Camry topped the list there were FORTY ONE vehicles with higher domestic…

Too bad that index isn’t worth the paper it is printed on - it uses a completely arbitrary cutoff for domestic content percentage, doesn’t even consider white collar jobs at all, and reorders vehicles based on sales numbers. The first year the Camry topped the list there were FORTY ONE vehicles with higher domestic…

Too bad that index isn’t worth the paper it is printed on - it uses a completely arbitrary cutoff for domestic content percentage, doesn’t even consider white collar jobs at all, and reorders vehicles based on sales numbers. The first year the Camry topped the list there were FORTY ONE vehicles with higher domestic…

Sounds like a brain dead idea to me.

Where do Mexicans or Canadians get their F-150s from? (hint: It isn’t Canada or Mexico).

What matters is BALANCE of trade. Arbitrarily taxing like you want will destroy the industry. It would force GM/Ford/Chrysler to take an inefficient production scheme where all vehicles sold in…

1st:

Once again, evidently, it must be explained that the lack of a specific product designated for a specific factory in a contract is NOT proof of any grand shift of production to Mexico. Take Ford, for example - they don’t specify Fusion or Taurus production in Flat Rock or Chicago - but they don’t have enough…

These two psychopaths had lots of experience in the military and diplomacy. An unbelievable amount, actually. How did that work for us?

The US has a ~3 year application and vetting process for refugees. We aren’t speeding this up - we’re talking about taking the first waves into Europe after they’ve been very carefully vetted, thus lightening the load on Europe so they can accept more.

In reality, we’re talking about taking the people who got out of…

There’s no balance? SERIOUSLY?

The Koch brothers’ anti-union network alone spent nearly 4x as much the last election cycle as all public sector unions COMBINED.

And as I pointed out, there IS a balance even absent that. The voters. They can easily outvote any union in existence. And in Ohio, our tax code is set such…

They can’t patent turbos combined with direct injection. They *can* patent plenty of design features or control features for either one, though, or a particular method of using them together.

When the Escape Hybrid came out, Ford would have been infringing on Toyota’s hybrid patents based on the design they came up…

“Captains of New York finance move billions with the click of a button, and drive down heralded streets like Fifth Avenue. So why can’t the people who make its manhole covers afford any shoes?”

Because captains of NY finance bought politicians that allowed for work to be sold to the lowest bidder regardless of working…

“What we don’t need is public sector government employee unions”

Said the person who has clearly never experienced the abusive working environment created in schools by politicians and administrators, where unions are the only thing protecting the worker (and in Ohio the only thing that can lead to any hope of a higher…

If you’re going to build the Taurus in any serious numbers for the US market, yes, that makes sense.

But seriously, though - Ford’s simply getting flexibility in its contract for what goes where when, just like people have always said they need to get... and people view it as they must be abandoning the factory. In…

They *might* replace it with another product in that plant - but that’s a far cry from saying no more cars built in the US.

The plant is near capacity right now, but nowhere near it if they kill off the Taurus and MKS.

Ford is investing $900 million into the Chicago plant over the course of the contract, according to the Detroit Free Press.

There is *ZERO* chance they invest that much just to support the Explorer.

Yeah, but because the contract doesn’t specify a product, people freak out. Ford is investing $400 million into Flat Rock. They aren’t going to put that much into the plant and then leave a few years later.