The festivities over the new Fiesta continue at Ford with the production of the one-millionth current generation model at the company’s central European plant in Cologne, Germany. The production milestone comes less than two months after Ford announced that European sales of the new Fiesta reached the 1 million mark in the beginning of March, 2011. Current global sales of the new Fiesta stand at 1,350,000 unit since its introduction in October 2008.
The Cologne facility has been manufacturing the new Fiesta since 2008, with the factory churning out an average of 1,770 Fiestas and Fusions (a small crossover based on the previous generation Fiesta) per day. The plant employs 4,200 workers in each of the three production shifts and has an annually capacity of 400,000 vehicles.
Ford revealed that the construction time for a new Fiesta at the Cologne site currently stands at thirteen hours, an improvement of five-hours over a decade ago. The company said that the reduction in build time comes as a result of “ongoing improvements and investment” with some €100 million (about US$148 million) being invested in 2010 alone.
The Cologne assembly plant and the Ford Fiesta –facts:
- The assembly line hall areas measure 14,000m2 in total
- The volume of production in 2010 was 391,439 cars
- 16 per cent of vehicles produced in Cologne leave the plant by rail, 41 per cent by truck and 43 per cent are shipped using waterways
- The total area of the Cologne site equates 40 football pitches
- The length of permanently installed suspension tracks is 11km
