news

Global Orion platform in doubt

The global possibility of Ford Australia's Orion rear-wheel drive platform may be in doubt following comments indicating Ford US would develop its own platform for its rear-wheel drive vehicles.


After announcing its commitment toward building rear-wheel drive cars, Ford alluded to the fact that the Australian architecture developed for the new Falcon would also form the underpinnings for the Lincoln MKR and the Ford Interceptor.

However J Mays, Ford group Vice President of Design, has spoken to Automotive News recently, apparently unaware of any decision.

"The vehicles that we're looking at will be designed where they're engineered, and those global rear-wheel-drive platform vehicles will be engineered here in the United States, as far as I know,"

Apparently the approach is similar to Ford's decision to assign the design and development of global small cars to Europe.

"Small cars are Europe's expertise and have been for the last 30 years. Big cars, America's usually been pretty good at, when they do it right."

Instead, Ford is supposedly gathering input on the platform from its operations around the globe, with the lead development team likely to be positioned in Dearborn, Michigan.

Regardless, global architecture based on the Australian developed Orion platform has not been completely ruled out - although Ford has maintained production of vehicles based on the platform would not take place in Australia.

Chat with us!







Chat with Agent