New car production has never been more on consumers’ minds than it is these days. Between COVID-19 factory closures and a furious uptick in demand, we found ourselves in a serious log jam of production delays, price gauging, and massive inflation. Thankfully, the jam is starting to break up a bit. Few makers experienced insane demand and production delays quite like Ford did. The popularity of the Bronco, Bronco Sport, Mustang Mach-E, Maverick, and the Ford F-150 Lightning made the production issues all the more pronounced. Now Ford is ramping up production on the most popular models. 

Can you buy a Ford F-150 Lightning? 

Many Ford customers have spent multiple years on waiting lists for certain Ford models. In hopes of keeping these customers, Ford is officially getting on the ball with new car production. The blue oval folks say they are prioritizing the most popular models. This makes plenty of sense, but it’s interesting to hear the automaker say this when production is down across the board. 

While the new Ford Lightning is still quite difficult to get your hands on, this news might mean that you can go to a dealership and buy one sometime soon. 

Ford has the coolest production lineup it’s ever had

Ford has no shortage of iconic nameplates in its long history. However, this period of Ford production might just be the most cool models the brand has ever made at one time. Think about it, the Bronco, Bronco Sport, the F-150 hybrid and lightning, the Maverick, Mustang Mach-E, multiple cool Mustangs, and the F-150 Raptor R. Hell, that is an all-time lineup by any metric. 

However, MotorTrend makes the really interesting point that despite the number of cool models, Ford has bungled the launch of just about every one of these models. Production delays, quality issues, and recalls have dominated the story of Ford for the past few years. MotorTrend also notes that while these mistakes can’t be fixed overnight, Ford does seem to be actively addressing them now, and it should increase production significantly. 

How can Ford fix production problems? 

Multiple plants are taking multiple different approaches to fix specific production problems. The Kansas City, MO, is adding a third shift and hiring 1,100 more employees. This change is projected to make an additional 38,000 Transit and E-Transit commercial vans annually. Ford also announced that Ford Mustang Mach-E production is getting fined tuned. The change will result in double the number of crossovers made in an hour. The Maverick and Bronco Sport customers would also get some good news as those models will see increased production by more than 80,000 units this year. 

The Ford F-150 Lightning is made in the EV facility in Michigan, and they are now on track to see production triple this year. This means hitting the annual target of 175,000 units. Even after the brief Lightning production shutdown, production numbers should still improve dramatically. 

Considering that 68% of Ford’s sales this year, so far, are electric vehicles, this spurring of the F-150 Lightning production makes a lot of sense. 

Getting these issues resolved can’t come fast enough. These new car issues have spilled onto the used markets as well. I think it’s fair to say that we are all ready to see these insane prices and even crazier waitlists disappear.