Ford’s F-150 truck has been the sales leader in its class for years, but the competition is getting tougher all the time. Every other automaker is after as big a chunk of the market as it can get, along with the coveted title of best selling. Ford is well aware of the competition and has no intention of giving up the title without a fight, and the plans to stay on top include this brand new Ford F-150.

The 2009 F-150 is a total redesign, one that Ford approached at as an opportunity, looking at every area of the truck for sale to see where improvements were needed. Did they succeed? It looks good, but we won’t know for sure until buyers start driving trucks off of dealer lots.

2009 F-150 Highlights

The hydroformed high-strength steel frame is lighter but stronger, offering 10-percent more torsional rigidity and higher towing and hauling capacity than previous models.

Standard equipment includes AdvanceTrac with Roll Stability Control and Trailer Sway Control (both systems help keep the truck under control during quick maneuvers).

The F-150 has an optional rear camera mounted in the tailgate — perfect for hooking up to a new 0or used trailer.

You can get an (optional) integrated trailer brake controller that’s automatically activated when you hit the brakes, and can also be controlled by a lever on the dash.

Ford redesigned the trucks front and rear suspension for a better ride and improved handling.

The Ford F-150 truck is available with Ford Sync, Sirius TraveLink, Voice Activated Navigation and a Sony 700 watt, 10-speaker audio system.

The SuperCrew has fold up rear seat and truly flat rear floor.

The cab is 6-inches longer and the front door post has been moved back for better peripheral vision.

Ford added multiple types of sound-absorbing materials in the dash, firewall and roof.

The 2009 Ford F-150 is still offered in the XL, STX, XLT, FX4, Lariat and King Ranch trim levels, with a new Platinum Edition that’s built for luxury. It features 10-way leather captains chairs, a real wood dash and brushed aluminum trim throughout the cabin.

The Ford F-150 Platinum SuperCrew has power retractable running boards; optional on other models.

Union says slashing output of pick ups and SUVs will eliminate 300 jobs

The storm battering Detroit intensified yesterday with Ford Motor Co. offering a bleak sales outlook and its second major production cut in less than a month, which will wipe out 300 jobs at its Canadian operations.

Ford said it will delay introduction of a new generation of its F-series pickup by two months, cut production of trucks and truck-based sport utility vehicles even further than it announced less than a month ago and will have difficulty meeting its previous target of breaking even on a company-wide basis next year.

It also reiterated earlier plans to boost output of smaller cars and crossover utilities, including the CUVs made in Oakville, Ont.

“We view the move to smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles as permanent and we are responding to customer demand,” Ford president Alan Mulally said in a statement.

Union officials said slashing output of trucks and SUVs means 300 jobs will be lost at the company’s Windsor, Ont., engine facility, which puts together V-8 and V-10 engines for pickups and SUVs.

There are about 2,500 Canadian Auto Workers members now at Ford’s engine plants and joint ventures in the city and 738 on layoff, Mike Vince, president of local 200 in Windsor, said yesterday.

The crisis in Detroit is spilling over to parts makers in Canada as well, with Magna International Inc. announcing this week that it will slash 400 jobs or one-quarter of the work force at a plant in St. Thomas, Ont., that makes frames for GM’s pickups. GM revealed in turn that it is delaying development of its next generation of pickup trucks to focus more of its resources on cars and other vehicles that use less gas.

Magna’s U.S. plants will take a hit with the Ford announcement because the parts giant makes many components for heavy-duty pickups assembled at one Ford plant in Kentucky and frames for the Explorer SUV built at another plant in that state. Output is being throttled back at both plants. It will trim a shift of Explorer production and cut the assembly line speed at the pickup plant.

Previous cuts by the Detroit Three are one of the causes of parts sector employment in Canada plunging by more than 20,000 jobs to 81,676 workers last month from a peak reached in 2001, industry analyst Dennis DesRosiers said in a report yesterday.

The parts sector will not disappear, said Mr. DesRosiers, president of DesRosiers Automotive Consultants Inc.

“The remaining parts sector should be able to recover as the cyclical downturn in the industry recovers,” Mr. DesRosiers said.

The Ford announcement capped a brutal week for the Detroit Three that included forecasts by several Wall Street analysts and the chairman of Chrysler LLC that sales in the U.S. market will plunge to their lowest level this month in more than a decade.

Underlining the growing danger to Detroit was Ford’s new statement that its perennially profitable credit arm will report a pretax loss this year and will not pay a dividend to its parent company.

Regulator filings show Ford Motor Credit Co. has posted a profit annually since 1989, which is as far back as Securities and Exchange Commission documents go.

Two influential U.S. ratings agencies added to the pressure, with Standard & Poor’s Corp. placing ratings for all three companies on credit watch with negative implications and Moody’s Investors Service Inc. cutting Ford’s outlook to negative from stable.

Both rating agencies are worried about the cash drain the severe slump in truck and SUV sales is causing.

“We have renewed concerns about all three auto makers’ future cash outflows in light of the prospects for U.S. sales for the rest of 2008 and into 2009,” said Standard & Poor’s credit analyst Robert Schulz.

Deteriorating fundamentals could reduce liquidity to undesirable levels by the second half of next year, Standard & Poor’s added.

As Ford delays the launch of the new Ford F-150 pickup, 260 UAW members who weld that truck’s frame in Elizabethtown will be out of a job by Sunday. The mass layoff leaves just one shift of 475 workers who will still earn an average of $15 per hour at the plant a half-hour drive south of Louisville.

Some of the workers to be laid off at Dana include assembly line and skilled trade hands hired in January, UAW Local 3047 recording secretary Wayne Kolley said Tuesday. But then gas hit $4 a gallon, truck sales plummeted, and Ford announced drastic action to temporarily close or take its F-150 plants down to just one shift through the third quarter.

“We were having a hard time finding people to work back in January. It turned around rather quickly,” Kolley said Wednesday. “Now we see the writing on the wall. This is an indefinite layoff, unless business picks up and the economy gets better.”

Dana Corp., based in Toledo, Ohio, just emerged from bankruptcy court protection late last year. From her office in Maumee, a suburb of Toledo, Dana spokeswoman Jamie Bibbs said the auto parts supplier is trimming production to cope with lurching change in the auto industry.

“We are adjusting our production for the market,” Bibbs said.

Dana’s contract with UAW Local 3047 grants workers paid health insurance for three months following the layoff, Kolley said. Unemployment benefits, he estimated, will provide workers with about $400 a week.

Ford Motor Company is recalling a whole herd of trucks to see the team doctors over concerns about a hose in the braking system that could adversely effect the vehicles’ braking power. According to the NHTSA, about 605,000 2005 and 2006 model year Ford F150 and Lincoln Mark LT trucks equipped with the 3-valve 5.4-liter V8 will receive a hose replacement free of charge. The problem hose supplies the brake booster with engine vacuum, and could swell over time and eventually become disconnected. While the hydraulic braking system will function without the power assist, pedal effort will be significantly increased, and if drivers are taken off-guard by the problem an accident could occur. Ford will start notifying owners in June, and the recall campaign will kick off in July. According to FoMoCo, there have been 11 minor accidents related to the issue.

Led Zeppelin’s back together. Stagflation and high gas prices have made a comeback as well. And late next year, you’ll be able to complete a 1970s revival with a two-door car that’s all business up front and party out back.

Answering the wishes of fervent fans — and the fears of some critics — General Motors Corp. was to unveil today its plans for a revival of the Chevy El Camino car-truck as a 2010 model Pontiac hot rod. The “sport truck” doesn’t have a name yet; GM will run a contest over the next month asking for submissions at a Pontiac Web site www.pontiac.com/namethiscar, and announce the winner April 15.

Here’s one: “Australiaino.”

Based on the same underpinnings as the G8 sedan and upcoming Chevrolet Camaro, the un-Camino will be built in Australia, where GM has centered engineering efforts for rear-wheel drive cars. It’s a risky strategy for GM, as Australian-built models have never sold well in the United States, and a weaker U.S. dollar threatens the business case for any imports.

But without its Australian arm, GM would not likely have enough resources to give Pontiac new models.

In addition to the mini-truck, GM also was to unveil today a version of the G8 sedan with the Corvette’s 402-horsepower engine that is to come to showrooms in the next year.

Australia has the longest history with so-called utes, since they were invented there by a Ford engineer in 1934 who got the idea from a farmer seeking one vehicle for church on Sundays and the pig market on Mondays. Ford brought the idea to the United States in the late 1950s, and GM followed, with the Chevrolet El Camino growing to define the segment.

GM’s U.S. production peaked in 1973 at nearly 72,000 El Caminos and GMC Caballeros. By the early 1980s, tighter fuel rules for cars had made small pickups more competitive, and GM ended production in 1988.

And by then, the El Camino and its ilk had become a punch line. President Bill Clinton told workers at GM’s Louisiana truck plant in 1994 that he owned an El Camino in the ’70s: “It was a real sort of Southern deal. I had Astroturf in the back. You don’t want to know why, but I did.”

Abandoned in the United States — save for some unsuccessful stabs at a comeback such as the Subaru Baja — the utility market flourished in Australia, where Ford and GM’s Holden have continued to build several models.

The G8-based vehicle will come only with the 361-horsepower V8 offered in the G8 GT paired with a six-speed automatic transmission. It will haul more than 1,000 pounds and tow 3,500 pounds — as much as some small pickups.

Ford Motor Co. is recalling about 100,000 2008 F-Series trucks because the front driver’s seat does not comply with federal seat back strength regulations, according to information reported by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Covered in the recall are F-250, F-350, F-450 and F-550 models of Ford’s (NYSE: F) Super Duty trucks, which are built at Louisville’s Kentucky Truck Plant. More than 87,000 of the trucks are in the United States, and 14,000 are in Canada.

“Some 40 percent split and captain’s chair driver’s seats, equipped with lumbar supports, may have improper welds at the joint of the seat back pivot bracket and seat back,” the NHTSA reported. As a result, “in the event of a crash, the seat side pivot bracket may crack or break, increasing the risk of injury to the seat occupant.”

However, no injuries have been reported, according to an Associated Press report.

Ford Motor Co. is launching its new F-150 next year, but it can’t get to market soon enough.

Ford ended January with 32.5% of the sales in the full-size truck segment, down 1.2 percentage points compared with the same period a year earlier. That was the biggest decline among the competitors in the large truck category, which is one of the big profit centers for automakers. While the Ford F-Series has been the best-selling truck model for 31 years, the Chevrolet Silverado trailed the F-Series by just 5,000 trucks in January. Toyota Motor Corp.’s new Tundra picked up 4.8 percentage points of share in the month, for 9.5% of the market.

Coming up: Ford prepares to launch another round of buyouts of its hourly workers.
Couple win auto show wedding

Most people go to auto shows to pick out a car. One couple is going to the Chicago Auto Show to make a stronger commitment.

Chrysler chose Jackie Rohner and Blake Humphrey of Rock Island, Ill., from 63 entries to get married at the auto show. The couple — she’s a schoolteacher and he’s a firefighter — win a Dodge Journey, and Chrysler sprang for a wedding reception and, of course, a Journey cover band.

“If we have experienced and accomplished so many great things in less than a year of dating, we can’t wait to see what, together as a married couple, we can accomplish in a lifetime,” Rohner said in her entry letter.

Coming up: Chrysler readies launch of Dodge Journey crossover.
Site for motoring memories opens

Want to post a picture of that 1968 Camaro you drove in your younger days? Have a story about working at a General Motors plant?

GM has opened up its “Wiki” site at its GMNext Web site that allows the public to share stories about the first 100 years of the world’s largest automaker.

Users must register their e-mail on www.gmnext.com to make submissions, then click the Wiki tab at the top. From there, users can post a picture, write a submission or read other submissions.

GM said all submissions are moderated to assure they follow the rules listed on the Wiki, but accuracy is overseen by the user community and subject matter experts.

NASCAR Busch series, which will be called the Nationwide series in 2008 and beyond:
A source at Ford Motor Company says the motorsports division expects the Ford Mustang to replace the Fusion in the NASCAR Busch [Nationwide Series in 2008] series.

That said, it may not be a done deal. Reportedly Chevrolet is balking at running the Camaro in the NASCAR series. Rumors suggest that Dodge is considering a Busch series version of the Challenger, which just went on sale at a price of under $38,000, for delivery in 2008. Dodge will build 5,000 Challengers in 2008, and expects to increase that number by sevenfold for 2009. Sales expectations for the Chevrolet Camaro are higher. With the discontinuation of the Monte Carlo, Chevrolet has no sports coupe aside from the Corvette and the small Cobalt SS, and won’t until the Camaro is introduced. The Corvette will continue to race in the American Le Mans and Grand-Am series, though one contingent within General Motors is pressing for a body change for the ALMS GT1 class, where GM’s two factory Corvettes literally have no competition: They’d like to see those Corvettes rebodied as Camaros to help launch that model, which won’t hit the market until well after the Challenger.

Also, the move to “pony car” coupes could cause a problem for Toyota. The Camry Solara, a two-door sedan version of the top-selling car in the United States, may disappear after the 2008 model year. Sales are dismal; Toyota is expected to build only about 30,000 Solaras this year, compared to about 400,000 Camry sedans. One possibility at Toyota: Automotive News says that the company is expected to introduce a new Celica sports coupe in Europe in 2009. If that car comes here, it could be raced in NASCAR. The discontinued Celica made some appearances in the now-defunct NASCAR Dash series. If the move to the Mustang, et al, is to be made for 2009, that announcement would be expected soon after the first of next year.