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Ford's cash cow adds another portal, and gains lost of now end torque.

Depending on how you view it, Ford Motor Co. is either one step behind in the emerging 4-door extended cab pickup market, or a quantum leap ahead of everybody else. The 1999 SuperCab adds a second rear door, on the driver's side, to the current 3-door F-Series cab, but it comes a full year after Dodge unleashed its Quad Cab Ram. The new SuperCab, however, completes Ford's strategy to become the first automaker to offer four doors on all of its pickups -- from the compact Ranger (launched last spring) to the big F-250, the first over-8,500-pound GVW trucks to have four portals.

What may count most is that the new F-Series cab is still a year ahead of arch-rival GM, which won't have 4-door versions of its new GMT800 trucks for sale until the 2000 model year.

Ford chose to make the 4-door cab standard on all SuperCab F-150/250 models (program code PN96/102), rather than make it an option, as Chrysler did on the Quad Cab ($750 extra) Ram. That move will help simplify customer ordering, production scheduling, and body assembly in the three F-Series plants in Kansas City, Mo., Norfolk, Va., and Ontario Truck in Canada, notes Susan Pacheco, F-150/250 chief program engineer.

If Dodge's first year of experience is an indication, the 4-door trend will dominate the pickup market. Fifty-three percent of Ram sales are now Quad Cabs, according to Chrysler. Ford expects the new SuperCab to grab 66% or more of F-Series sales -- over 500,000 units per year. That's more SuperCab trucks in a year than Dodge Division's total 1997 car sales.

While the two automakers are bullish, some industry observers are hesitant to declare total victory for the 4-door pickup just yet.

"It's a very profitable part of the truck market, and it will grow. But the danger in the pickup segment is rising prices, due to the spread of extra features -- like 4-door cabs," says Michael Schmall, managing partner of The Planning Edge, a Troy, Mich.-based auto industry consultancy. "Pickups don't have the seemingly endless price ceiling of the SUV segment."

Analyst Schmall says given their dependency on truck profits, Ford, Chrysler and GM can't risk getting caught outside a niche. Thus the rush to four doors.

# posted by Medical Information : 3:21 AM