For months, news of new investment at Ford’s two engine plants in Windsor, Ontario has been making the rounds. The supposed story was that Windsor would get a new family of small, fuel-efficient engines, and possibly even hybrid powertrains. The (wishful) thinking was that the profitable assembly of these powertrains might lead to small car production in Canada.
This past week, it emerged that Windsor would not get the new engine family, which would apparently have led to the creation of 1,000 direct jobs and as many as as 9,000 indirect jobs. Both Ford of Canada and the Ontario and Canadian federal governments could not agree on how large of a subsidy would have to be given out to bring the engine assembly to Ontario.
In the aftermath, new details are emerging. For starters, the investment was slated to go to Mexico (where small cars like the Fiesta are built), and Unifor, Canada’s auto worker union, tried to “steal the program”. Unifor’s Jerry Dias noted that the engines are destined for assembly plants in Mexico and there was a “heavy ask” from Ford in terms of subsidies.
This makes perfect sense: small cars are notoriously unprofitable, and building their powertrains in a high-cost jurisdiction makes little sense. Ford is rumored to be moving production of the Fiesta to Thailand, since Mexican assembly isn’t leading to a profitable North American-spec Fiesta. The idea of Canadian production of the Fiesta, or another small car, is a bit of a pipe dream.
On the other hand, all is not lost for Canadian manufacturing. Ford recently committed to building the next-generation Edge at their Oakville Assembly Complex, which means an additional 1,000 jobs. And the Windsor plants are currently building large V8 engines for Ford’s popular pickup trucks. Some outlets have suggested that the left-leaning Ontario government was interested in the smaller engines, since it sees fuel efficient small cars as the way of the future. But the sales data and consumer appetite for big pickups on both sides of the 49th Parallel suggest that Windsor’s current product portfolio – the 5.0L Coyote V8 and other larger engines – is the right one for current market conditions.
Unless or until the Canadian dollar falls to a point where Canadian manufacturing becomes attractive for low-margin vehicles like the Fiesta, I don’t see this happening. In the alternative, the Province and/or Feds decide to kick in more tax dollars to subsidize every engine manafactured. As a former Windsor resident who still resides in SW Ontario, sure I’d like to see this level of investment, but at what cost? Dias must have been dreaming, but hey, I can’t fault him for trying.
Toronto is the only city I can think of with an automotive plant – Oakville – in its nicest suburb.
Although, if I’m being honest, maybe Oakville isn’t Toronto’s nicest suburb, maybe it’s just the most American.
I wouldn’t say that the Big 3 have their plants in the nicest cities in the Detroit area. There isn’t room for an auto plant in most of those places. I will say that they all have plants that are/were in habitable areas (Livonia, Lake Orion, Sterling Heights, etc). But they also have plants in neighborhoods that you can get shot while getting shot (Hamtramck and Jefferson North). The idea of an assembly plant in Grosse Pointe or Birmingham makes me laugh though.
Oakville (especially the lakeshore) is probably Toronto’s nicest suburb, if you consider “Nice” to mean “Absurdly wealthy”.
Some places in-city (Bridle Path, Kingsway, Forest Hill, Wychwood) might be nicer on average, but Oakville is very much home to a lot of multi-millionaire C-suite tenants and financiers and boy, does it show.
And Ford Drive really isn’t that far from that neighbourhood.
If you count Oakville as a Toronto suburb, we also have the Chrysler plant in Brampton and the GM plant in Oshawa. Oakville is nice enough I guess (I mean, compared to Brampton and Oshawa at least). But we haven’t had a plant in Toronto proper since GM had a van plant in Scarborough through the 80’s (although it wasn’t officially Toronto at that point, for official Toronto, we have to go back to the 50’s, I believe).
Montreal also had the Ste Therese plant to build the Camaro through 2002.
@ Maymar….We took a big hit here the Shwa. However life can’t be too bad out here. 900 sq ft houses built in the 60’s, are fetching nearly $300 K.
Just sayin!
@mikey, don’t worry, I just have a compulsive hatred of the entire 905 from growing up in Keswick. That said, it’s getting close to $300k being the floor on detached houses anywhere in the GTA, except Hamilton.
I also apologize to VoGo for misinterpreting his original statement, although I assume (haven’t been there in a while) that Oakville (which has both the assembly plant and Canadian HQ) is about equivalent to Dearborn (Ford world HQ and River Rouge).
FWIW, I was also in Halifax last week, and the corner of the city that had the final Volvo plant seemed pleasant, although I couldn’t say how it was by the time the facility closed in ’98.
Ya grew up in the “Wick”…and you don’t like the 905 ?…fair enough.
The history of auto manufacturing in Toronto is long and interesting.
On the west side of Laird just south of Eglinton you can see the head office of the Durant Motor company. It is an attractive art deco style building. Durant’s manufacturing facilities no longer exist but were on the east side of Laird.
The Shoppers World Mall on the Danforth was originally built as a Ford manufacturing plant. There were large windows fronting onto Danforth through which pedestrians could watch the cars move along the assembly line.
The Scarborough van plant on Eglinton Avenue East for over a decade manufactured all full sized GM vans. The plant actually existed for over 40 years. There are 2 good books on its history/operations. Life on the Line by Solange de Santis who worked there and You Can’t Bring Back Yesterday published by its local CAW 303. From the mid 50’s to the late 80’s there were over 10,000 employed in largely well paid manufacturing jobs on Eglinton Ave East between Pharmacy and Kennedy. All of those are now gone and the area is instead a ‘super centre’ with a Home Depot, Wal-Mart etc.
For a while during the late 50’s and early 60’s Rootes Motors actually had an assembly facility on the southwest corner of Warden and Eglinton. The building still exists. I believe that they shipped knocked down vehicles from the UK and assembled them in Scarborough. Much like Volvo did in Nova Scotia for a few decades. My father took me to this Rootes facility to pick up his brand new Mini. A rather tight fit for a man who was 6’1″ plus and 245lbs+ when in top shape.
Oakville for many decades has rated in the top 10 (and often at the very top) of all Canadian municipalities regarding median income. Does the existence of the Ford plant have a strong influence on this?
Oshawa was Canada’s motor city. Right from the introduction of the McLaughlin. Oshawa’s economy for nearly 100 years was dependent upon the automotive industry. Hopefully diversification (post-secondary education/medical) will alleviate this dependence.
Don’t worry Windsor, there are plenty of profitable crossovers in your future
Doubt that; crossovers would go to Oakville
I should have been clearer, engines for profitable crossovers
I guess if you consider F-150s, Mustangs, cutaways, chassis cabs and strip chassis “crossovers”.
Wasn’t that the idea behind getting the smaller engines? All they’re making now are the big, honking V8s that have a limited future.
Yeah…the big, honking V8’s that also had a limited future back in 1982 according to the pundits of the time. I sense that most readers here were not even born in ’82. Get real. They are not going anywhere anytime soon. And should they do, automakers will die in droves.One of the endearing qualities of a small engine? It will always be SMALL, low torque output, and no amount of transmission speeds or turbos will ever fix the lack of crankshaft stroke. Might be fine in certain country’s where a “road” is about the size of our sidewalks here, but,end of day, not happening here. Hell, most motorcycles sold here have bigger engines than cars sold elsewhere. Too many wide open spaces, and I’ll be dammed if I’m gonna drive a 1.0L anything that has more than 2 wheels, do not care if it has a 16 speed(or more) transmission
I didn’t say NO future, zb, I said LIMITED future. That means fewer engines built and limited employment for the plant, if the limited V8 production isn’t consolidated elsewhere.
A V8 will never be installed in a Fiesta or Focus, and more of those will be sold than a F350. That’s the point of seeking smaller engines for the Canadian plant: keeping the plant open and increasing employment.
BTW, I couldn’t have been born after ’82, I got my license (and college degree) in the ’60s, you old geezer.
“Ford is rumored to be moving production of the Fiesta to Thailand, since Mexican assembly isn’t leading to a profitable North American-spec Fiesta.”
The race to the bottom.
From Thailand it will jump to Bolivia, then Ghana, finally to return to the USA.
No more Ford production will be moved to Thailand as it is becoming the Detroit of South East Asia
I thought that was Malaysia. Vietnam would be a good place, except the communist government bribes are probably too steep.
No, Thailand is, the others just run assembly plants for heir specific countries
If illegal immigration keeps up why not! We have a huge uneducated workforce with no marketable skills. Why not take advantage? Just keep looking the other way and let the automakers pay ’em under the table, like they do in restaurants, construction and lawn care.
Do you really count restaurant, construction, and lawn car as unskilled labor? I’m going to assume you’ve had a privileged existence and never worked in those or similar fields. There’s a lot of skilled, marketable work in all those sectors. It’s hard work, but that doesn’t mean people doing it can just be replaced on the fly.
Mostly, yes, I do count those that way.
Skilled labor is a *term of art* in economics, referring to a labor force with *significant* education or specialized training.
Most jobs in those fields are unskilled labor.
Just don’t think that means that no “skills” in the normal sense are involved, or that “anyone could do the job”.
That *term of art* as you’re using it is now archaic in economics, having been merged into the “professional” class.
There are so many rules and regulations, plus complicated expensive equipment and detailed sequencing in the restaurant, construction and even landscaping fields, that only a tiny number of jobs are of the unskilled variety in those fields.
The rest now require enough education to read detailed instructions, follow a strict sequence and time schedule, and document that all procedures and regulations were followed.
I’ve worked in all three, with a college degree, and I wasn’t the only one. I’ve seen people hired who were classic sweat of their brow unskilled workers, only to be let go because, with their limited education, it would take too long to train them.
Interesting. Our lawn guy and cleaning lady didn’t get that email.
Jose has been a marvel to watch in the 12 years he’s handled our lawn. Hard working, industrious, knows who to call to fix anything (he was the first person I know with an iPhone way back when). Two of his sons who work for him on weekends are in college.
Bettina is rather new to us, cleaning for 5 years now. She sends nearly all her income back home to help her parents.
Both provide a perhaps common service to a level far beyond our ability. Serious, the few times I tried to cut our lawn it took 3 hours and I hacked it up.
Both Jose and Bettina pay tons of taxes in everything they do, and make great contributions they make to our community.
I couldn’t tell you their legal citizenship status and frankly I don’t care. We nearly all came from “uneducated” immigrants at one time….
If those aren’t unskilled jobs, then what are? If you can learn it in less than a month, it’s unskilled.
We just need cars built of Legos to fulfill the American Dream.
Take my money NOW!!!!
It’s funny you should mention that, since the LEGO Group is the world’s largest manufacturer of tires.
And it’s “LEGO bricks/pieces/whatever”, BTW, not “Legos”. An adjective, not a noun. It’s one of the few things I get anal about as an AFOL. But if you don’t wanna listen to me and keep using the term incorrectly, I’m not gonna stop you.
The Fusion is built in Mexico, as well, and it is anything but a small car.
FYI, the Fusion is built in three locations. The two North American locations (Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico and Flat Rock, MI) supply the cars to the western hemisphere. (To wit, about half the Fusions in the US are made in Mexico, the other half in Flat Rock.) The third assembly plant (for the Mondeo-badged Fusions) is in Spain. That plant is having issues with QC, which is why the new-generation Mondeo has not yet started selling in Europe.
“The third assembly plant (for the Mondeo-badged Fusions) is in Spain. That plant is having issues with QC, which is why the new-generation Mondeo has not yet started selling in Europe.”
That’s not true. The new Mondeo was scheduled to be built in the Genk plant before Ford decided to close it. That plant closure and subsequent relocation to Valencia are what caused the delay. The timing hasn’t changed at all since the decision was made to move the production location.
They really thought there was a chance that Ford was going to build a B-segment car in Canada?
“But the sales data and consumer appetite for big pickups on both sides of the 49th Parallel suggest that Windsor’s current product portfolio – the 5.0L Coyote V8 and other larger engines – is the right one for current market conditions.”
Which engines are made in Windsor?
The Coyote 5.0 V8 in the F150 is being edged out by the 2.7 and 3.5 litre ecoboost engines.
The V10 for commercial trucks is not a volume seller and the same can be said for the 5.4 V8.
Do they build a V6?
As long as I can still get Aluminator and Coyote V8’s, I don’t care what Ford does about their engine plant locations. I just wish we could sell more of them, the LS series of GM engines sell 5-1 in this shop.
Odd, my last post didn’t make the cut.
Which engines are made at Windsor?
The V10 is a low volume commercial only unit and the 5.4 still gets used but also in limited numbers.
The 5.0 Coyote engine in pickups is getting marginalized by the 2.7 Ecoboost and 3.5 Ecoboost. The 5.0 is the token V8 for the “loud pipes saves lives” cat-back tribe.
Am I missing something?
There are 2 engine plants running in the Windsor area, Essex Engine which builds the 5.0L and Windsor Engine which builds the 6.8L V10 and 5.4L V8 for medium duty, chassis cab, cutaway, and strip chassis.
Windsor Engine makes the 5.4L and the 6.8L V10.
Essex Engine makes the Coyote 5.0L.
Both plants are in the Windsor area.
Across the river and up the road in Romeo, they build the 4.6L, 5.0L, 6.2L, and were building the 5.8L supercharged engine on the niche line.
(what Danio said)
@danio3834, @bball40dtw – that is what I thought. The “And the Windsor plants are currently building large V8 engines for Ford’s popular pickup trucks.” is misleading since the 5.0 is the only engine left made in Windsor (the town not plant) used in the F150. IIRC Ford expects only 20-30% of their new trucks will have the 5.0.
I would much rather be working at Romeo, Cleveland, or Lima than Windsor or Essex. At some point Romeo might be able to handle all V8 or larger engine production for Ford.
Will the 6.8 V10 be discontinued with the E-Series and current F-650/750?
Comment eaten, FYI
Hard to compete with Mexican auto workers making $26 a day, and feeble Mexican unions. Remember that Mexico competes with China for jobs. This is all about Ford improving its bottom line.
Why would Ford make an engine for a subcompact car in Canada? We don’t buy that many subcompact cars in the US or Canada. Who makes a subcompact car in the US or Canada? Just the Chevy Sonic (which comes as a complete knockdown kit from S Korea).
bball40dtw – Canada does have a greater affinity for sub-compacts and compacts which is odd considering per capita Canada buys more pickups.
So it’s too expensive to build in Japan so they moved production to the United States – because it’s cheaper here.
For US builders it’s too expensive to build in the United States, so they moved to Mexico.
Now Mexico is getting to expensive because, gasp, their standard of living is going up, so now they are going to join Australia moving to Thailand.
So at what point do the wheels fall off and those in the middle tiers can no longer buy a new car without financing it out for 6 to 8 years.
Oh wait, we’re already there…
You’re completely right. How much longer can they play musical assembly destinations and it still be profitable?
@bball40dtw – Canada does have a greater affinity for sub-compacts and compacts which is odd considering per capita Canada buys more pickups.
If my comment does not show up, I am done with this site
Good news!
The 5.0L Coyote V8 looks like an ideal fit for a brand new body-on-frame sedan.
Brand-new BOF sedan? Yeah, we got that already; it’s called the F-150.
So what you’re saying is that I should lower the f**k out of a F-150 with the shortest bed option, put on a tonneau cover, and then glue on LTD badges?
Livonia Transmission had a Coyote powered Panther. I wonder where that thing ended up.
Probably embedded in a concrete wall at the end of a dragstrip.
My original post seems to have been eaten by our filter.
Past auto manufacturing/assembly plants in Toronto.
Durant Motors head office still standing on Laird south of Eglinton. The manufacturing was across the street.
Ford manufacturing plant still standing now as Shoppers World, Danforth.
Rootes Motors assembly plant still standing on the south-west corner of Eglinton and Warden.
GM van plant (operated for 25+ years) and produced all full sized GM vans, is torn down and now a Power Centre (Wal-Mart/Home Depot/etc).
“My original post seems to have been eaten by our filter.”
OT, but it would be fascinating know/determine how many comments have been deleted or never posted in the 1st place after being submitted due to glitch in the Matrix.
If I’m not mistaken, the building at the northwest corner of Dupont and Christie used to be a Ford plant (like back in the Model T days), with a track on the roof. Also, there was another plant down near King and Dufferin, for Nash, I believe.
You are correct. The Ford building is still standing and it did have a track on its roof. I believe that they moved from there to the Danforth.
At one time the area of Eglinton Ave East in Scarboro had over 10,000 manufacturing jobs. Now, all gone. The Rootes Motors building was still there a few years ago. Not sure about now. My father took me there to pick up his brand new Mini
The Durant plant existed as a manufacturing and warehouse facility until the turn of this century. It is now also part of a ‘power centre’ containing big box stores. But the head office building is still there on Laird.
Not sure about the Nash plant. There are still some industrial buildings on the north-west side of Queen and Dufferin. Of course Liberty Village was the site of the Inglis plant which was a major manufacturer of submachine guns and other weapons during both world wars.
Hamilton had the final operating Studebaker plant. However, it might be a stretch to call central Hamilton a ‘nice’ place, although at that time it was certainly affluent.
DeadWeight – agreed. I noticed 2 posts I made that vanished (one for 2 days) has now appeared.
I’m arriving late at this party but would just like to set the historical record straight.
In his comment on the October 2014 editorial, “The Game Changer That Never Was”, Arthur Dailey mentions the Rootes Motors (Canada) facility in Scarborough, Ontario, at the S.W. corner of Warden and Eglinton East, as having being used to build units from CKD (i.e. completely-knocked-down) components. This was never the case. The building was large, but from its official opening in 1952, through to when Rootes operations ceased there, around 1967, it was never used for building vehicles. At the time of the 1952 opening, Rootes claimed that it was the largest vehicle showroom in North America — the Rootes brothers were always strong on marketing flair — this being the core of a retail sales operation. Also at the front of the building — west end — were the national offices for Rootes Canada operations. Behind — east end, entrance off Warden Ave, was the retail service department. At the rear, west end, was a train bay (connected to a spur line) where vehicle came in by rail from Halifax and/or Montreal; minor operations such as installation of seat belts were handled in the train bay. The rest of the rear of the building, mostly west end, was occupied by the national parts department(there were also satellite parts depots,and sales offices, in Montreal and Vancouver).
But never any vehicle assembly.
Information source? Myself. I was with Rootes Canada from 1962 to 1969, working out of that building until, as part of the Chrysler take-over, it was disposed of and operations moved out — for only two or so years — to a building in Pickering.
Like your site.
psb