Ford will add the 2-liter EcoBoost engine to Brook Park, creating hundreds of jobs over the next few years. Watch video
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BROOK PARK, Ohio -- Ford will bring what could become its most popular engine to its Cleveland Engine Plant No. 1 in Brook Park by next year, the automaker said this morning.
The 2-liter, turbocharged EcoBoost engine is already used in six vehicles in the United States, and Ford has said it will go into others as well. Now made in Spain, the engine goes into everything from a hot rod version of the Focus compact car to the Escape sport utility vehicle. Ford said it will spend $200 million to upgrade the engine plant for the new line.
Plant manager Charlie Binger said Ford is adding a new assembly line for the small engine, and the first shift on that line will start toward the end of 2014. A second shift should begin by early 2015.
Last week, the United Auto Workers Local 1250 reached a tentative deal with Ford to bring the engine to the plant. In 2011, during nationwide contract talks with the UAW, Ford promised the plant a new engine contingent on getting a new local labor deal.
Brook Park employees narrowly approved that pact on Monday.
Local 1250 President Mike Gammella said over the next few years, the new engine could nearly double employment at the site to about 1,800 from 1,065 today. Ford said the investment will initially bring 450 jobs to the site, but Gammella said there should be lots of room for growth as more vehicles get the engine.
Binger said the plan is for two shifts for now, but he said there's "a great possibility" of getting a third crew, given the number of popular vehicles that Ford plans to power with the small engine.
Most of the new workers will come from Ford plants that are closing in other areas such as the Walton Hills Stamping Plant that is set to close by 2015.
"As they start to phase down production, we'll be ready to bring people in," Binger said. "But they're aren't going to be enough. This is going to be a combination of transfers and new hires."
Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, said bringing work from Spain to the United States showed that Ford's workers here are able to compete and win in a global marketplace.
"This plant is really a cornerstone, not just of Brook Park and Cleveland's comeback, but of America's comeback," Kaptur told workers at the plant. "You have all made America very proud."
Joe Hinrichs, Ford's president of the Americas, said announcing new work and a vibrant future for the Cleveland site was personally fulfilling. Six years ago, it was Hinrichs who told Ford workers in Brook Park that the company was going to close the massive casting plant on the site permanently, shutter Cleveland Engine Plant No. 1 for at least a year and end one of two production shifts at Cleveland Engine Plant No. 2.
For a native of Fostoria, near Toledo, he said it was heartbreaking to have to share such news with people in his home state.
"As difficult as it was when we heard all of the announcements and took those restructuring actions, we're seeing the results of that now," Hinrichs said. Ford has gone from losing billions every year to becoming one of the most profitable automakers in the world. "That's the most exciting part about this for me personally. The things we did are paying dividends now. So now, it's all about growth."
Tim Levandusky, a UAW official who was president of the Local 1250 six years ago when Ford announced the massive closures at Brook Park, watched and clapped from the audience Thursday as union officials, Ford executives and politicians praised the new jobs.
Now an official with the UAW in Detroit, he declined to talk about his reaction to the new jobs at his old plant, but presence was notable. Workers crowded around him after the event, shaking his hand and talking about how much better today's news was than the announcements that came six years ago.
Gammella choked up a bit when he thought about how much the site has been through in such a short period of time. When he took over as the local's president, the plant now making EcoBoost engines was idle, and little work was going on to get it ready for a prosperous future.
"This plant has 66 people in it and a program that was years behind schedule. But we turned it around," Gammella said. "I can't tell you how many times I was told no, but we stuck with it."
The 2-liter engine will be the second EcoBoost product made in Brook Park. EcoBoost is Ford's term for turbocharged engines that use direct fuel injection, a pair of technologies that allow for smaller, more powerful engines. Boosted four cylinder engines can replace V-6s while boosted V-6s can replace V-8s.
The biggest success Ford has had with EcoBoost has been the 3.5-liter V-6 made in Brook Park. That engine quickly become the best selling motor in F-150 pickups, Ford's best-selling vehicle.Ford says the smaller engines offer much better fuel economy than the engines they replaced.
The 2-liter is Ford's workhorse engine for most of its mid-sized products. The company expects it to be a huge seller in the Fusion sedan, Escape and Explorer SUV. In Europe, the company also uses the engine in minivans and it Australia, it uses it in a rear-wheel-drive Falcon sports sedan.
In several vehicles, the 2-liter EcoBoost replaces a 3-liter V-6 that had been made at the Cleveland Engine Plant No. 2 in Brook Park. Ford closed that site last year when it ended production of that engine. Workers transferred to Engine Plant No. 1 where Ford added a third production shift to feed demand for the truck engine.