Ford moves from platforms to 'Lego' strategy; S80 sedan and S-Max, Galaxy minivans share building blocks.(News)

Automotive News Europe,  March, 2006  by Weernink, Wim Oude; Wernle, Bradford

• E-mail
• Print
• Link

Byline: Wim Oude Weernink, Bradford Wernle

Richard Parry-Jones likes to compare the building blocks of Ford Motor's vehicles to Lego Technics, the mechanical versions of the popular buildable toys.

By making these building blocks interchangeable, like Lego toys, Ford and its brands are able to create a variety of very different models using many similar components.

"It gives us extreme flexibility," said Parry-Jones, group vice president global product development at Ford Motor "Look at it as a set of Lego Technics. If you give an identical set of Legos to ...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.