Ford Australia production capped at 30,000 vehicles annually

Ford Australia will maintain current manufacturing outputs of its locally-produced Falcon and Territory variants despite the release of two updated models.

At the launch of the updated FG X Falcon and SZ MkII Territory this week, the car maker's Australian chief, Bob Graziano, confirmed to Fairfax Media that daily outputs at Broadmeadows would remain unchanged at 83 vehicles for the foreseeable future – down from 133 vehicles a day earlier this year and 260 vehicles a day back in 2010. 

"We continue to produce to demand and so we'll look at what the consumers want out there," Graziano said. "We've got to look at it from the long run and try and understand where the volumes are going to come from and the mixes.

"It's capped at 83 jobs a day or 83 vehicles a day. It's been that since June this year."

Asked specifically whether current outputs would be left unchanged, Graziano said: "Yes. We'll look at what happens with the market out there but what we're building to now is the 83 jobs per day."

From the outside, the manufacturing cap paints a drab picture for Ford's sales ambitions of the updated Falcon and Territory.

It comes despite internal forecasts that the Falcon, and in particular the returning XR8 model, would defy downward trends against large passenger cars and help increase annual sales for the brand.

"I think XR8 demand will be a lot stronger than what we're forecasting," Ford Australia general marketing manager David Katic said.

Asked whether it was possible for the XR8 to constitute more than one-third of overall Falcon sales, in the same way the V8-powered Commodore does for Holden, Katic said: "I would have thought one-third was a bit rich. We have stock to do more, it just depends on what that mix is."

"We're very confident of the plan we have until October 2016. We're not planning a down ramp, all the indications are that consumers are interested in the product and internally we're really interested in how it's going so far.

"We're expecting an improved performance from the Falcon but there are a whole lot of variables. We're expecting our performance within the large car segment to improve but obviously the amount of consumers looking for large cars will be a key variable."

Ford Australia is staunch in its ambition to keep its Australian manufacturing operations alive until October 2016, the same date nominated when it announced the closures in 2013.

"We're really confident. FG X is tracking way ahead of where we want it," Katic said,

"We feel very confident around our volume core through there. We've got two great products (Falcon and Territory) that have been very well received and that will carry us very strongly."

Sales of the Falcon and Territory have steadily declined in the past decade, culminating in nine consecutive years of falling overall sales for Ford Australia.

It is expected the FG X will help arrest that slide due its significance as a potential collector's item. However Katic was reticent to identify strong resale values as a major incentive for prospective buyers.

"I don't know how many people are buying it for that reason," he said. "Whenever you launch a new model, you get those people that are loyalists and enthusiasts who want to by the first model regardless of what's happened to it.

"At the moment, we're seeing that mix of the market who wants to buy the FG X. At the moment, the customer demand isn't around it being the last Falcon, it's more around them loving the styling, loving the specs, loving the XR8."