Bronco production update 8/9: Commodity issues far beyond MIC tops. Chip shortage reaches Bronco supply chain (NO COVID TALK)

[KaneNorth]

I gave up on enjoying the summer in a new bronco when my order was pushed back to 8/16. Now dreams of taking photos with my cyber orange bronco in the fall colours are quickly fading, got pushed to 9/20. Now planning glamour shots of it looking like a lump of yellow snow assuming I get it this year at all.

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[Tricky Dick]

While I have your attention (and while the Band Camp jokes are going strong!)... our program's new Premier drums (example below) are DONE and will leave the factory tomorrow or Wednesday. My company, Musick Limited - Premier USA, is providing these drums at cost and I'm personally covering all the importation fees. However, freight to get them here is clocking in at about $2,400 in the current market... about 3 times what it should be in a normal market.

If any of you would like to help offset some of these costs, please know how much myself, my kids, and our booster club would appreciate it. Contributions can be sent via Paypal to [email protected].

I appreciate being a part of this community!

Bumping this for those just arriving. Let's take care of this man.

 

[Big Boss]

Welp

 

[Roll Sound]

Here's the thing - Ford has tried to string everyone along and keep enthusiasm up in the face of constant delays. At this point, they need to push out a real communication to order holders AND equip dealers with real information to assist their customers. They have been overpromising and underdelivering consistently throughout this process - and maybe all due to factors they have limited control over - but at the end of the day, the product says "Ford" on it (well, or at least "Bronco", which is a Ford product!), so the buck stops with them. Start under promising and then try to over deliver. I feel bad for people who were planning on moving from a lease into their Bronco, or need to upgrade a vehicle and were waiting on this with no end in sight. Many of us, myself included, were buying this as an "extra" vehicle, so while very frustrating, it's not critical for me. If it takes too long, I may just move on to something else and think about it further down the road. But they are terribly mismanaging their customers on this, and as a Ford shareholder, this very well could have a trickle down effect of people walking away from their orders, and possibly not coming back to Ford for future purchases. And it may certainly impact other people considering an order for the launch of the F150 Lightning or other future vehicle - especially with Ford announcing they want to shift more to build to order sales. And I realize these are unique times, but as many of us in various businesses have seen this past year, how you communicate with your stakeholders through a crisis can have tremendous impact on how you emerge from it - and Ford is failing in that category, in my opinion.

At this point, I think Ford should simply say "we are having far greater supply chain and production challenges than we could have anticipated, and we know that we have not done a sufficient job of communicating that with you. At this point, our commitment for 2021 is to deliver all First Edition reservations, and all Broncos that have been built and are waiting on parts or other quality checks. If you have not received notification that your Bronco has been built, you should anticipate a MY 22 build, and we will be releasing the build & price for MY 22 on ____. If you have a Ford vehicle that is end of lease and have a Bronco on order, your dealer has options to extend that lease for you at your current payment until your Bronco is delivered." And then come up with some sort of meaningful financial incentive / discount to get order holders to stay in the queue and not bail on their orders - commit to selling at invoice, guarantee 0% financing, etc. Do something to hold onto as many orders as you can because if people start to bail, you lose so many enthusiasts that would be your initial brand ambassadors, and you the negative comments and coverage will pile up. And then maybe start MY 22 production earlier if they are able to and have cleared the units promised, but stop dragging this shit out and rip the band-aid off already.

Amen.

 

[JaxGtc]

That sucks to hear about how Bronco production is about to go to almost nill. But that’s life. Glad you’re back and not black listed by Ford.

Maybe wishful thinking on my part, but I didn't read that in the OP.

 

[Richtor]

When Ford says they have chips for 60k builds, they mean that they have suppliers committed to getting them the 60k chips. But then when the supplier doesn't deliver...

That’s a mistake on their part then. They should have stated “we believe we have all the chips need for the 21 Broncos.”

It’s not a good look when you have limited, or may have limited chips, and you’re build dealer lot vehicles instead of customer orders from 13 months ago!

 

[HotdogThud]

Perhaps it was a non-event precisely because so much effort was put into fixing the problem before 1/1/2000?

Valid, I spent 2 years remediating shit leading up to it. it was just frustrating for our side to tell the business "nothing is going to happen", and watch them ignore us and force us to be at the office while they partied.

....and nothing happened.

 

[Baddie64]

The few that get a 21 Bronco will indeed have a rare collector car. I’d hold onto it for awhile.

 

[@BadBlueBronco]

Hey guys, I'm alive and well. I taught our band camp last week, 14 hours a day Mon-Fri. I was quite busy.

A blacked out Transit didn't abduct me in the middle of the night or anything.

Things are not great. Commodity issues far beyond the MIC tops have exploded, the chip shortage has finally reached the Bronco supply chain, and nobody really has any good answers at this point. As bad as the issues have been up to this point, this is worse.

Things are so fluid and changing so quickly, by the time I get scraps of new info it's quite likely outdated. If there's one little glimmer of good news, it may just be that the planned volume and availability of the dealer stock 4 door soft top units is quickly trending downward. After all, you can't build the "less desirable" units if you can't build anything at all.

Edit to add: My inbox is crammed with a metric ton of unread messages. If you're waiting on a reply, I'll try to get thru those in the next few days.

Q&A



In all honesty, FE reservation holders are the only ones who should feel super confident about much of anything at this point.

You're good.



To my knowledge, none of the purgatory holds are waiting on chips. MAP hasn't built any Broncos without chips awaiting further installation as other Ford plants have. I've heard of some proposals but nothing that's started yet.



No, emphatically. Hasn't happened, isn't happening, won't happen.

IS it too early to ask about scheduling this week?

 

[2021badlands bronco bob]

Nobody actually wants that once they realize what that would mean to prices. Customers want things to be cheap, and shareholders want as much profit as possible.

Now there is an example of a real irony nothing is cheap any more. It’s all about a companies bottom line . We well never know what would happen because company CEO just think about $ .

 

[navi]

In all honesty, FE reservation holders are the only ones who should feel super confident about much of anything at this point.

You're good.

One thing that makes no sense is the oldest lot rot vehicles (35 day plus) were made while the plant had enough chips/parts right?
Surely they wouldn't have started a run without enough parts for the day, so these aren't chip issue vehicles.

Yes, we are largely past COVID in the USA. The vaccine is highly effective, with near 100% prevention of hospitalization/death in vaccinated persons. Anyone who wants a vaccine can get one in the USA.

Church groups down south or whatever, if they don't want the vaccine, they'll have to deal with possibility of stronger COVID symptoms if contracted. Definitely the rest of the vaccinated population should not be victim to more authoritarian restrictions because of those folks, or persons just wanting to exert control.

And children were never a high risk group for COVID. The very low IFR (infection fatality rate) in children is well established. I sure hope schools don't close down again. My wife is a grade school teacher, at a Chicagland school that did not fully close down during COVID. And her school (one of the largest grade schools in the area) had no COVID outbreak.

COVID is and always was, a key risk for the elderly and persons with certain co-morbidities. It's unfortunate we didn't laser focus on those folks early on.

man, you can hope in one hand...

 

[Ricky_gibbs]

As I've said before, I wish Ford had pulled a '12 Focus and had an 18 month run of 2022 Broncos. Having a '21 and a '22 seems to be a bit more confusing. I'm sure there is some reason, but Ford has rarely started production of a model year in the middle of the year.

Just the mustang right?

 

[79BKO]

I’ve said this from the beginning. They will rob unused chips that are supposed to be for the Broncos and put them in F150s instead. They make way more money off of pickups than SUVs. It’s just smart business. They won’t tell anyone they’re doing this but check and see which plants are running and which are not.

I will say I'm monitoring the Rail yard here in Houston and I've seen tons of F-150's delivered in the last few weeks.

 

[navi]

The few that get a 21 Bronco will indeed have a rare collector car. I’d hold onto it for awhile.

That makes sense as far as rarity... If it is a lemon, does that reduce the collectibility significantly?

 

[BaseSquatch]

Broncos ARE scheduling this week.

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