The webs, they are a churning. On Monday The Detroit News published an article stating that Ford would be taking advantage of the weak dollar and moving development work of its next generation rear wheel drive platform from Australia to the United States. That's all well and good but then Carpoint of Australia went and asked Ford of Australias Manager of PR Sinead McAlary about it. Her response of "It's too early to speculate on that" has set off a flurry of speculation that there's a turf war raging within Ford over the home of the platform. So for the record the current story line is this: DetNews publishes story claiming RWD platform moving to USA, Carpoint gets Ford AU on record with a "not so fast" response, and Ford USA is not on the record for anything. We called Ford directly to see if we could get some clarity on the story, and the result was a resounding maybe.
Communications Director Alan Hall noted that "Yes global engineering resources are being considered for the RWD platform, but we can't say at this time where the engineering resources will be. At this time all of the stories floating around are pure speculation." So there you have it, we're just going to have to wait and see where things end up.