Shrinking F-150 V8 Demand Prompts Shift Cut at Ford Engine Plant
Americans love their Ford F-150s, but buyers are increasingly opting for a powerplant boasting fewer than eight cylinders. As such, the automaker is cutting the third shift at the Windsor, Ontario engine plant tasked with building the 5.0-liter Coyote V8.
Ford V8s and Windsor have a long association, but the extraneous employees needn’t worry about hitting the job boards. There’s a much larger V8 in need of assembly.
As reported by Automotive News, the availability of a stronger base V6 (a dual-injection 3.3-liter), a brace of EcoBoost V6 motors, and a new 3.0-liter diesel V6 led to an increasingly smaller take rate for the Coyote engine. A Ford spokesperson told the publication the third shift was cut “to better align with consumer demand.”
The October shift cut at Ford’s Essex Engine Plant impacts 120 employees, but the only hardship they’ll face is, in some cases, a longer commute to work.
“All employees affected by the shift reduction will have the opportunity to move to Windsor Engine Plant Annex to support 7.3-litre engine production,” said Ford Canada spokesman Matthew Drennan-Scace.
Speaking to CBC, Drennan-Scace said the company expects “two engine assembly and three supporting shifts” at Windsor Engine by the end of the year. That 7.3-liter, a monster of a pushrod gas V8 carrying the moniker “Godzilla,” will serve in Ford’s revamped 2020 Super Duty line. In commercial applications, it replaces the Windsor-built 6.8-liter Triton V10.
As for the F-150, V8 popularity took a huge hit following the Blue Oval’s release of its 2.7- and 3.5-liter twin-turbo V6s. By 2017, the Coyote’s take rate was just a quarter of all sales.
The writing was on the wall for an Essex plant shift cut, claims John D’Agnolo, president of Unifor Local 200.
“We’ve had down shifts every week since January, and we have two down weeks in the summer, and two more down weeks scheduled in September,” he told Automotive News. “We could see that sales of the 5.0-liter were dropping.”
[Image: Ford]
More by Steph Willems
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All this proves is that very dumb people are easily trucked by deceptive marketing. Nobody with an IQ in the double digits would choose the garbage Egobust engines. Forums are littered with very questionable reliability, Ford mechanics prefer the V8 and they get garbage mileage.
I think the idea that engine quality matters to Ford truck customers is hilarious.