Ford Wayne Truck Plant Closes for Retooling

Just a few miles west of the quaint downtown village of Dearborn lay the city of Wayne, Michigan. For years Ford's Wayne Michigan Truck Plant has produced Ford Expeditions and Lincoln Navigators by the hundreds of thousands. This week, the plant on Michigan Ave built it's last Ford Expedition. It is a signal of changing times where large trucks and SUV's are giving way to smaller more efficient cars and crossovers.

That may sound like bad news at first, but it marks a big step in the transformation that is about to take place. The plant which has been a long time player in Ford's collection of factories will undergo a complete modernization and retooling to begin building a new small car platform in 2010. Often thought impossible in today's Detroit, the plant will build high volume economy cars based on Ford's European Focus chassis.

The existing tooling for the Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator will be shipped to the Louisville, Kentucky plant where the model will resume production later in 2009. This is good news for Louisville where F-Series trucks are already being built as this plant's future had been in question in recent years. Ford's Kentucky contingent has a breath of new life in their futures.

What will be produced in the transformed Wayne plant? That has yet to be announced, but Ford has said that it will be bringing a number of its European models to the states. These cars are top sellers across the pond and have won many accolades from the world automotive press. They are stylish, dynamic, and efficient - something hard to say about our American Ford Focus.

There are a number of derivatives of the European Ford Focus including a small people mover known as the C-Max and a small SUV known as the Kuga. Another possible model that might be in the works is a premium small car for the Mercury brand. The European Ford Focus is already a known model that Ford plans to bring stateside, but will likely be produced at the existing Focus production plant that is next door to the Wayne Truck Plant.

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