Stakes Are High For Ford's F-150 Debut This Fall

(MoneyWatch)  Ford Motor Co. is building up to launching the all-new 2009 Ford F-150 pickup this fall at the worst possible time -- as high gas prices have consumers turning away from SUVs and full-size pickups.

Make that running away: Sales of large pickups fell 3.2 percent in 2007 to about 2.1 million, according to AutoData Corp. But sales of the lame-duck Ford F-150 model dropped 13.2 percent, to 690,589. This year through March, large pickups are off even more -- down 14.9 percent from the year-ago quarter, to 437,252, according to AutoData. In the same period, the F-150 was off 13.7 percent to 148,138.

The stakes for Ford couldn't be much higher. Even though it was off so much in 2007, the Ford F-150 was still the nation's No. 1-selling car or truck. The F-150 and earlier product generations of the full-size Ford pickup have been the best-selling vehicle for 26 years in a row, and the best-selling truck for 31 years in a row, according to George Pipas, Ford's U.S. sales analysis manager. In contrast, the best-selling car in 2007, the Toyota Camry, had 2007 sales of 473,108.

Ford is on a crash program to cut its operations to fit lower long-term demand. Since the end of 2005 the company said it has cut 23,100 blue-collar jobs; 7,600 white-collar jobs; and closed plants representing production of almost 1 million units per year.

Ford isn't the only one, of course. Rivals Chrysler LLC and General Motors are going through their own wrenching changes. Mike DiGiovanni, GM's executive director of global market and industry analysis, briefly looked back on eight years on the job, in an April 1 conference call for Wall Street analysts and reporters. At the time, "gas was about $1.25 a gallon, and in the forecast we had at the time, to increase production of full-size trucks was a no-brainer," he said. "Now we've got to shift. Trucks are not going away, they're going to come back, but you can't just bank on that alone to have a disproportionate share of our lineup in the future."