Ford Short on Black, Red Paint Colors Due to Japan Earthquake

[TrainTrac]

Looks like ol' Henry's favorite color will be hard to come by for a while...

Ford Short on Black, Red Paint Colors Due to Japan Earthquake



Published March 25, 2011



Ford Motor Co. founder Henry Ford used to tell customers they could buy a Model T in any color as long was it was black. Not any more, at least for the time being, The Wall Street Journal reported in its Friday edition.



On Thursday, the auto maker halted all new orders for trucks, SUVs and cars in "tuxedo black" and other hues due to shortages of some pigments made in Japan, following the March 11 earthquake.



Ford, in a memo to its dealers, said its plants will continue producing the vehicles affected. But during the week of April 4, it will produce no F-150s, SuperDutys, Expeditions or Navigators in tuxedo black, the memo said. Ford also will limit production of tuxedo black versions of the Explorer, Taurus and MKS at its Chicago assembly plant.



Production of certain red vehicles also will be limited at the Kentucky truck, Michigan assembly, Ohio truck and Twin Cities truck plants, the memo said. The shades of red include "royal red," "red candy," and "red fire."



"We have recently been made aware of a supply chain issue that will disrupt the supply of pigments for some of our paints," Kenneth M. Czubay, Ford's US sales chief, wrote in the memo, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.



The action by Ford is the latest sign the devastation in Japan is having an impact on auto makers in other parts of the world. General Motors Co. has stopped production at a truck plant in Louisiana and slowed output at two in Europe because of a shortage of air flow sensors made by Hitachi Ltd.'s Hitachi Automotive Systems in two Japanese plants that have been shut down because of the earthquake. France's PSA Peugeot-Citroen SA has also cut production in several European plants because of a shortage of Hitachi sensors.



Ford spokesman Todd Nissen confirmed the auto maker sent the note Thursday as a precautionary measure concerning metallic paints.



"There is a pigment, called xirallic, that is running low in supply," Nissen said. "While we can fill current orders we have asked dealers not to take new orders for certain types of paints."



Nissen said the change will not affect the number of vehicles Ford is able to build, and only affects the colors of vehicles the company is planning to produce.

 

[Gill Wong]

And the latest casualties to be annouced later, will include Bordeaux Reserve Red and Kona Blue, all contain Xirallic in their respective formulas to the produce metallic flake.

 

[TrainTrac]

Gill,



See the fourth paragraph:

Production of certain red vehicles also will be limited at the Kentucky truck, Michigan assembly, Ohio truck and Twin Cities truck plants, the memo said. The shades of red include "royal red," "red candy," and "red fire."

 

[Tom Schindler]

Black was not Henry Fords favorite color. It was the cheapest color he could buy, therefore in his quest to make the Model T as cheap to buy as he possibly could, he could save the customer another few pennys so more people could buy one.



Read that in his autobiography and heard it at Greenfield Village.





Tom

 

[Kevin Lang]

It was the cheapest color he could buy

I thought black wasn't a color :grin:



The anecdote I always heard was that black paint dried the fastest, allowing more cars to be made in a given time, which drove down prices.



The History Channel only occasionally lies...



BTW, who said that black was Henry Ford's favorite color?



On this topic though, it seems that there was a ton of stuff being made in Japan that I didn't really know about. Digital cameras are becoming scarce, TV production was hit, Intel's new smaller microprocessor is delayed for a long while, and now paint? I thought Japan had long jumped on the China bandwagon, glad to see that they retain a proven significant amount of their own manufacturing. (I'd like to say that we could say the same)