Wednesday April 17th, 2013 marked the production of the one millionth Ford Mustang at Ford’s Flat Rock Assembly Plant in south east Michigan. The one millionth unit was a 2014 model year Mustang in GT Premium Convertible trim adorned in Ruby Red paint, and the momentous occasion of its production was attended by Ford group vice president for global product development Raj Nair and Flat Rock material planning and logistics manager Ed Salna, who drove the one millionth unit off the line.
“Mustang is one of the most beloved nameplates in the industry, with fans around the world and throughout Ford Motor Company,” said Nair. “The team here at Flat Rock Assembly has built an outstanding reputation for quality while producing one million Mustangs over the last nine years, and we expect that to continue for many years to come.”
Throughout the Mustang’s 50 continuous years of production, the sports car always had some kind of a manufacturing presence in Michigan. Most recently, Ford moved Mustang production to Flat Rock in 2004 — an event that coincided with the release of the sports car’s fifth generation that, for the first time ever, didn’t share its platform with another car. In that regard, it took ten years to produce one million ‘Stang at Flat Rock, which makes us wonder how long it will take Ford to make another million Mustangs at the facility.
Performing some basic arithmetic, it will likely take anywhere between 10 to 18 years. Given a monthly sales volume of 5,000 units, it will take Ford nearly 17 years to reach the 1 million mark. We should, however, note that that 5,000 monthly sales estimate might be particularly low given that the next-gen Mustang will likely sell in much higher numbers than the current (outgoing) fifth-gen model for two main reasons:
- Increased demand associated with the launch of a new vehicle. Given that all of Ford’s new vehicles have been nothing short of hits in the marketplace delivering sustained increases in sales volumes, this will likely be the case for the next Mustang as well.
- Whereas the current model is only offered in North America, a circumstance that limits its sales popularity, the all-new next-gen model will be a vehicle sold all over the world. But even so, it’s not clear whether Flat Rock will be Ford’s exclusive facility to manufacture the sports car for global markets, or whether the vehicle will be made in other plants around the world as well.
And while the fifth-generation Mustang enjoyed having the Flat Rock plant to itself for most of its existence, the all-new sixth-generation 2015 Mustang will share the facility with another highly-popular Ford vehicle — the Ford Fusion. Ford has recently begun producing the Fusion at the facility — thereby detaching the plant’s future from a single model. In dong so, The Blue Oval is adding 1,400 jobs and a second shift at the plant.
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