Ford To Show Employees And Retirees Everything But Kitchen Sink From Now Until 2010
Mark "Movie Star" Fields is making one hell of a "Bold Move" for the weekend after Thanksgiving — showing off something he's calling the "Showroom of the Future" at Detroit's Cobo Hall. The little post-turkey extravaganza is a curtain pull on FoMoCo's future product plans for Ford NorAm from now until, you know, whenever they run out of ideas — which apparently will be 2010. The two-day event is open to current and future Ford workers only, allowing them to see the automaker's product development plans aren't totally full of shit, "Dave" and fourteen Mustang variants. As Fields explains,
"Through our North America 'Way Forward' plan, we've spoken a lot about reducing our uncompetitive cost structure, but we have not yet fully explained our accelerated product plans...
...it's time to change that — and to show our full team of employees and retirees how this transformation truly is product-led."
Basically, this little exhibit will be an auto buff's dream — including new designs and concepts for everything from a new front-end to the Ford Five Hundred to a new front-end to the Ford Focus, all the way up to a new front-end to the next redesign of the Ford Mustang that isn't a Shelby-Saleen Boss whatever variant. To accommodate the time schedule, FoMoCo chief designer Peter "Big Balls" Horbury's probably busy applying a whole hell of a lot of "Dave" on platforms as we speak. We'd love to find out for ourselves, but despite 25,000 potential attendees, we're not among them. None of us are former or current FoMoCo employees. Given our Bruce Dickinson-like need for "More Dave" — we're putting out a call to would-be spy photogs: Now is the opportunity to get us the mother lode. First one to bring us pictures from inside the event of FoMoCo's Ford brand "Dave-ness", Mercruy's "MetroSexyBack" or Lincoln's "whatever" — will win one of them new t-shirts we talked about (and you talked about, given the comment load) yesterday. So yeah, that's right — let's tear this mutha down!
Workers peek at future Ford cars [Detroit News]
Related:
Hi, I'm Dave: Ford's New Design Direction; Ford's B.M. — Episode II: Peter Horbury Has Balls; But Does "Dave"? [internal]