Left-hand-drive a 'must' for Broadmeadows

Ford Australia boss, Bill Osborne, says production of left-hand-drive vehicles is a 'must-have' for the long-term prosperity of the company and its Broadmeadows carmaking operations.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Carsales Network at the launch of the FG Falcon last week, Osborne confirmed that Ford Australia would build left-hand-drive versions of the Focus when local production came on line in 2011.

He also said derivatives of the Focus' C1 platform would be built as left-hookers and that his aim was that all Broadmeadows-built products be suitable for export --beyond existing right-hand-drive markets like New Zealand and South Africa.

Osborne has identified improving Ford Australia's brand equity (more here) and continuing to diversifying its manufacturing strategy as his most important tasks.

"I need to begin to work very hard on the brand and I need to diversify the manufacturing strategy -- those are the two things that need to happen to make Ford of Australia have sustainable growth and sustainable profitability," Osborne told the Carsales Network.

"We need to manufacture a variety of products and I need to be able to export every one of those products [as] opposed to manufacturing one or two products for the domestic market." 

Osborne says the elements of the manufacturing strategy are "starting to fall in place".

"Having the Focus committed to Broadmeadows is a big step forward. We plan to build left-hand and right-hand drive on Focus -- so we'll have the opportunity to export.

"My goal is to have everything that we build in Broadmeadows -- no matter what it is, what segment -- that it is [built in] both left and right-hand drive.

"That's my goal. I think that the Australian market itself is not large enough to support the kind of scale that we have in Broadmeadows. And so there's only two ways to really support that scale -- you have to build more than one product, several products, and you have to be able to export those products to other markets.

"That's the strategy that I'm pushing for -- a long-term strategy around manufacturing flexibility and excellent export quality."

Flying in the face of Osborne's factory wishlist is the fact the new FG Falcon has not been engineered for left-hand-drive production. When the ex-engineer hosts a group of senior Ford US execs at the You Yangs proving ground early next month (more here), he'll no doubt be lobbying hard to change that.

Territory, likely to remain in its current non-FG format until it is replaced with a version re-engineered for the new global V6 powerplant, is theoretically the first of Broadmeadow's rear-wheel-drive based products that could be re-engineered for LHD.

The arrival of a turbodiesel engine in Territory on the same timeline would make the big SUV more attractive to overseas markets.

But there's another, smaller SUV that also figures in Ford's blueprint for Broadmeadows.

Osborne hinted strongly that the just-released Ford of Europe designed Kuga compact SUV (pictured, more here) would be one of the C1 variants built alongside Focus Down Under.

When asked when he would introduce Kuga into the local marketplace, he said: "Well, let me just put it like this -- the fact that we are building the C-1 platform, the Focus in 2011, will give us the opportunity to build a number of variants of the Focus.

"The Focus is a C1 platform, Kuga's a C1 platform..."

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