What’s going on here?
It’s no secret that automakers across the industry have been facing a tremendous uphill battle in wake of the COVID pandemic and resulting supply shortages. Earlier this summer, we reported that Ford parked thousands of Super Duty trucks near its Louisville, Kentucky truck plant. As the semiconductor shortage continues to strangle manufacturing, the administrator of Bronco6G forums posted a video from Mike Webb this week, showing a sea of new Ford Bronco SUVs piled up at the company’s Wayne, Michigan plant.
Click through to see the video here.
Naturally, enthusiasts posting within those forums — many of whom anxiously awaiting their deliveries — are frustrated and bewildered at what might be going on here. Ford, for its part, noted the semiconductor shortage as a key factor when we asked them earlier about hosts of vehicles stored at their manufacturing facilities.
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“The global semiconductor shortage continues to present challenges to a number of industries – including automakers worldwide. Our teams continue prioritizing key vehicle lines for production, making the most of our available semiconductor allocation, and will continue finding unique solutions around the world so we can provide as many high-demand vehicles as possible to our customers and dealers. Ford will build and hold these vehicles for a number of weeks, then ship the vehicles to dealers once the modules are available and comprehensive quality checks are complete.“
Statement from Ford on the chip shortage — May 4, 2021
Even the Bronco likely isn’t immune from supply chain issues.
To date, there are at least two notable issues that could be holding up Bronco production. One is securing enough chips to install in the vehicles, while the other refers to the molded-in-color (MIC) hardtop. Late last month, Bronco6G also posted about issues with some owners’ hardtops are already suffering from poor quality and damage, even as the first models make their way out to customers. In fact, we reported on roof squeaks in our own Bronco First Edition. Side note: Stay tuned for our update on how we try to solve that issue.
Despite the frustrating state of affairs, we can’t say with certainty why all those Broncos are currently held up at the Michigan Assembly Plant. Rumors naturally swirl on owners’ forums, but one comment stuck out from most. Despite the reason that Ford isn’t getting these cars out to customers, the company obviously does not want to sit on that much production any longer than is absolutely necessary. “[There’s] hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue sitting there”, the post says — and that’s a pretty astute assessment. The Blue Oval is still working on getting the Bronco out to waiting customers, though clearly that process isn’t going as smoothly as anyone hoped.
We’ll update this post if we confirm any more details, or there’s a major development in Ford’s hotly anticipated SUV actually hitting their destinations in large numbers.
