Maxidyne

Quite an accomplishment for Ford, sadly we'll probably never see it here...

I suspect VW Group wants at least controlling interest in Navistar... No point in spending hundreds of millions to develop a new cab, etc.. For International and then have it appear at GM dealerships.

Used to talk to a retired driver that ran out of the old National Tea warehouse in Hopkins, MN- He had fond memories of the Macks.

It's good to see NAV back from the death's door, and it's still selling for about half of asset value. But most of the analysts are giving NAV lukewarm "hold" ratings. Makes sense, given that the U.S. big truck market is currently being fluffed up by Chapter 179 subsidies and may cool once the market is glutted with new trucks and those tax loopholes go away. There's also the long term trend of intermodal growth that will reduce truck mileage... Instead of trading every 5 years, the big truckload carriers could end up keeping their trucks 10 years. That could shrink the U.S. Class 5 market to an unprofitable 100k units a year pace...

Per Transport Topics, U.S, new sales of class 8 trucks weren't quite 200k last year. Canadian sales were another 26,000 and Mexico sales another 22,000. There are a few other small markets like Australia and New Zealand where conventional cab trucks sell well, but the total market for heavy trucks is a couple million a year and maybe 300,000 of them are conventionals. Thus conventionals for our market are not a high priority for Ford and many other truck makers.

We won't get many new heavy trucks because our market is oddball (conventionals and EPA emissions standards) while the rest of the world wants cabovers and has gone with the Euro standards. Even in a good year our market is only 300,000 or so big trucks, why would Ford spend hundreds of millions to bring a conventional cab truck to market when at best they might sell 60,000 a year?

That was a few years back so the Granite chassis may no longer be available under the Pinnacle or Anthem cab. But if the HD chassis ain't an option, it should be- There are a lot of ag haulers that need 14 and 44k axles with cross diff locks to accommodate pusher axles and for when they go off road to load and a sleeper for overnight runs. Same in the oilfields, they need a heavy spec on/off road truck with a sleeper for when they can't get a motel.

USPS' problem is they want too many features so the big makers aren't interested, and I wouldn't be surprised if no one is able to meet all of USPS' requirements. Might makes sense for USPS to "punt" and buy something like the BOF RWD Ford Explorer based step vans they bough after the LLV contract ran out.

Maybe Ford didn't want the deal... This sounds like the sort of "lease' scam that's been pulled on a lot of truck drivers.

Was bad enough when Ford tried to build the Mustang on the Pinto chassis... But an electric crossover Mustang?

Wonder what the price was? I've seen state bid quotes of around $20k for a base Transit, so I suspect Daimler had to bid under that. Then again, these are for lease to Amazon's subcontractors, so maybe Amazon is just taking a cut as middleman in the deal and Daimler is making a hefty profit?

Given the open testing of Scania cabovers and VW light trucks here, I wouldn't be the slightest bit surprised if such a test "mule" is already on the road. Guess I'm gonna have to get familiar with Scania's chassis...

Kevin posted a couple days ago that the Scania V8 would need a wide front frame like Macks used to use due to it's width. I looked up the V8's dimensions and I'm afraid he's right, and with inline 6s dominating the market here there's no incentive for truck makers to build a wider or drop front frame. So while you could probably fit a Scania V8 in a CL or the other chassis that hosted the Mack V8, It looks like the Scania V8 won't fit any current International chassis. Wonder if the tooling for the drop front frame section from the Transtar days is still around...?

Essentially, a "tall Taurus"...

Actually I think the plan is to spin off Traton on the stock markets. Fiat already did the same thing with their tractor and truck operations and Daimler is doing a similar spin off.

I suspect a lot of customers that really want a wagon are buying SUVs because that's the closest thing they can get to a wagon.

Is the last few months press releases from Ford a clever disinformation campaign, or is this their real strategy?

Where Ford is headed: https://fordland.com/commercial-office-space/ Why mess around building cars and trucks when you can make a killing in real estate...

Yup, would have been cheaper for VW Group USA to declare bankruptcy than to accept the TDI Settlement! But VW Group USA is about 5% of VW Group, and a 5% job loss was unacceptable... So VW Group paid out billions to save about 30,000 jobs.

IIRC the Granite chassis was an option on the Pinnacle, good to see that option still available on the Anthem. Problem is, that capable chassis is going to need more than 505 HP from a 13 liter engine to run at 50 tons and above...

The managers de jour at Ford have no appreciation of Mulally's plan, they're trashing the products of the "one Ford" plan, sometimes before they even come to market.

That's 'cause of all the freebees they keep giving us VW owners...

They'll game the system, like everybody else... The 50 odd MPG requirement is just for small cars, larger vehicles have lower requirements based on their size, so CAFE is easy compared to the Euro goal which IIRC is 100 grams CO2/kilometer.

Hmmm... Wonder how they got that through the "rearward amplification" swerve test? Seems like with trailers only around 9-10 meters long a B train would be needed to pass. But I note a longer than usual drawbar and they seem to have gotten the CG as low as possible, maybe that's how they got PBS approval?

Ford's biggest successes did not come from "Cross Functional Teams"... The F series began when Ford responded to the demand for a cargo carrying vehicle with a beefed up Model T. The Mustang wasn't popular with test groups, but Ford noticed how sales of the Corvair and their own Falcon took off when they offered upmarket Monza and Futura models with bucket seats. Ford had a hunch that the market was their for a purpose built "sports car" and went with their hunch... The Mustang has been a profitable success for half a century since! The next F series or Mustang won't come out of any "Cross Functional Team", and if one sneaks in the door they'll make sure it doesn't make it out alive...