Customers in most of the European countries are now able to order the brand new 2019 Ford Focus with prices starting at €18,700 for the Trend trim in Germany, which equates to about $23,000 at the current exchange rates. Deliveries are scheduled to kick off in September this year and the Blue oval company has just started the production of one of its best-selling vehicles on the continent at its Saarlouis plant in Germany, where more than 6,000 employees are currently working.

Ford is confident the Saarlouis factory is one of the most efficient car factories in the world. The automaker claims some of the new production technologies are being used for the first time in the entire automotive industry, including a new hot-forming facility for high-strength and ultra-light steel components with a fully automated unloading process. The steel plates there are heated by gas and magnetic induction to 1,706 degrees Fahrenheit (930 degrees Celsius) and are then going under a 1,250-ton press.

“Saarlouis is still one of the most efficient and productive car factories in the world,” comments Gunnar Herrmann, chairman of the board of management at Ford of Europe. “To keep it that way, we are continually investing in this plant. In the production of the new Ford Focus, we spent around 600 million euros ($708 million) on new and optimized production facilities.”

The new Focus will be assembled in three shifts with about 1,400 examples expected to roll of the assembly lines every day. That’s almost the entire production capacity of the factory, where also the Euro-spec C-Max is assembled. Since the launch of the first-generation Focus in 1998, the Saarlouis plant has produced almost six million examples of the global model with approximately 85 percent of them exported to markets outside Germany.

Source: CAR CHNL, AutoShow, and Car TV on YouTube