Ford Motor Company has set aside $25 million to meet growing demands for its Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs).
Already, Ford has spent $900million to upgrade its Kentucky Truck Plant as part of measures to launch the 2018 Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator.
The development will allow Ford to build 25 percent more of the SUVs this year than originally planned.
“It’s important for this plant to produce more vehicles,” Joe Hinrichs, Ford’s president of global markets, was quoted as saying by auto news.
He added: “In this segment, people will pay for a great product. The dealer feedback has been even stronger than we’ve hoped for.”
Retail sales of the vehicles skyrocketed in January, up 59 percent for the Expedition and 132 percent for the Navigator. (Ford attributed a 15 percent decline in total Expedition sales to the timing of fleet orders.)
The highly profitable SUVs are turning on dealer lots almost as fast as they can be unloaded from delivery trucks.
It had been a decade since the Navigator was fully redesigned, and 20 years since the Expedition got a thorough overhaul.
