rev up your engines, well Ford the inventors of the Model T which was the
first really mass-produced car, has decided they don't want to really make
cars anymore, they say that they're gonna phase them out and they're only gonna
make the Ford Mustang which is a very popular sports car and the car they're
gonna call the focus active, now before you freak out and think oh man, Ford is
stopping making cars, realize that they're still making all kinds of
transportation vehicles they're gonna still make trucks, SUV, crossover vehicles
and hybrid vehicles, you may not know it but Ford's plan is that by the year 2021
they're gonna be number one sales in the United States for hybrid cars, surpassing
Toyota, now if you want to know the reason that they're not building cars
anymore, a lot of it has to do with both
profitability and society what's popular and what isn't popular, in terms of
profitability, SUVs, crossover vehicles and pickup trucks are the most
profitable things to build, so of course they want to build them and sell them
know when I was a young mechanic in the 1960s, station wagons were really popular
everybody had a station wagon to fit the kids and stuff in, SUVs and crossovers
have taken over from that as an example take this 2007 Toyota Matrix it's
basically a Toyota Corolla, the engine, transmission, brakes, are exactly the same
but it's a small SUV body, people want the handiness of four doors, but they
also want, carrying capacity where you can flop the seats down
I carried sheets of plywood in this thing, just take a look at any parking
lot these days, you're gonna find there's tons of SUVs, crossovers, so
really it's not like people aren't buying cars or making cars, they're just
the cars with SUV body style on them or in the case of the big SUVs they're just
a truck with an SUV body stuck on top of it, so Ford have been making f-150
trucks for a really long time and their very popular, hey they make money selling those
but they make even more money selling the giant SUV versions of them and if
you really look at it today, Ford saying they're not going to make any cars
except for the Mustangs really isn't that big of a change because today, they
only make six models of sedans and coupes anyway, they're just dropping six
models it's not that big of a deal really, now it was a really big deal when
people gave up their horses and buggies and got Model T Fords, but I mean really
changing from a Ford Fusion to an SUV or a crossover, really isn't big of a change
anyway, and when you look at it from the business standpoint, hey if you're
ran a company, what would you want to sell, a bunch of little cars you hardly
make any money at or suvs crossovers and big pickup trucks that you make a lot
of profit on, it would only make sense to go the way of not making the little
cars and from what they talked about their focus active, they don't actually
make it yet, but that'll probably be a smaller car, odds are it will be made in
China who knows it might even be an electric car, so if they go electric cars
or even smaller cars, hey they'll have a car to sell to people and if you really
think about it, when Ford was only making Model T's a long time ago and Henry
joked, hey you can have any color you want as long as it's black, hey they made
a lot of money selling only one model of car and the Mustangs hey they'll probably
be making them for a long time, it's a popular American icon, you can get little
bitty ones with four-cylinder engines, you can get them with big v8 engines, you
can get them standard, automatic, even a 10 speed automatic that's pretty much
bulletproof, so all in all this talk about Ford no longer making any cars, well you
know it's kind of a big deal about hardly anything at all
most people hey they're going to SUVs they got a family they want to fit a
bunch of people in, they want to carry stuff when they can and if they're
really serious, they'll get a pickup truck and they're never going to stop making
those pickup trucks, so if you really think about it, the idea of Ford no longer
making cars it's just fitting with the rest of our
society, they're switching to SUVs and giant pickup trucks that they are always good
at, if the future merits it, electric cars and a heavier
dose of hybrids, although the hybrids cost so much money to produce, I personally doubt
that don't ever be a really gigantic part of the market, because hey either go
full electric or really efficient gasoline engines, you're gonna get about
the same thing on either of them, why switch the whole way to a system
that has to go partly electric, partly gasoline or
diesel, it's always gonna cost more money to build something that's hybrid it's a
higher level of technology and then when they get old hardly anybody knows how to
fix them and then you got to buy another one, that's the reason down here in Texas
where things don't really rust, I got a lot of customers with Ford f-150 pickups
some of them are 30 years old or more and they're still running really good so
you're going against planned obsolescence if you go to a simpler
system that is only a gasoline engine or only a diesel engine, making it
hybrid that to me that's too much technology, like do we really need
talking refrigerators that can order your food when you're low on milk, I mean
come on now, but getting ready a car and getting an SUV or a crossover vehicle, tat
only makes sense in our society, so Ford really they're just following the market
forces so they continue to make a profit and sell vehicles that people want to
drive, notice that Ford has stopped making model T's a long time
ago, even Volkswagen stop making beetles, things change and a company has to
follow those changes or people won't buy their product and since this is the
Thursday segment where I answer a viewers question, place your own question
on the YouTube comments below and I'll pick the best ones to make a single
video to answer your questions, and where else can you find a guy with 50 years
experience of fixing cars to answer your own question with a video, so if you
never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to ring that
Bell!