NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Ford Motor Co. said Monday it plans to close 14 manufacturing plants in North America and cut between 25,000 to 30,000 jobs by 2012 as it tries to stem losses and adjust to its new, significantly lower market share.

The nation's No. 2 automaker said that it will close a total of seven North American assembly plants. Three U.S. assembly plants identified for closing in the next three years are in St. Louis, Wixom, Mich., and Atlanta. Two other assembly plants yet to be determined will also be closed by 2008,

The St. Louis plant, with about 1,500 employees, makes the Ford Explorer and its Mercury twin, the Mountaineer.

Ford promised that the company would make 250,000 fuel-efficient gas-electric hybrid vehicles annually by the end of the decade. Mark Fields, the president of Ford's operations in the Americas, said Ford would make a new push to try to capture the small car segment, in which it had trouble making money in the past.

The other two plants identified for closing are the Wixom plant, which has about 1,600 employees and makes the Lincoln LS and Lincoln Town Car, as well as the Ford GT, and the Atlanta plant, with about 2,000 employees, that makes the Taurus.

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The big Ford assembly plant in Atlanta is closing and tons of people are loosing their job. The plant has been in operation since 1947 and is big news here.

I attest this to lack of vision, poorly done (Or lack of) research & development, incorrect marketing forcasts and bad management.

I'd bet some bigshot is going to get a huge bonus over this.

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Actually, I just read an article on this > http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10895953/

A financial analyst, commented that Ford failed to announce how they were going to get their market share back. Added that it takes about four years for a new vehicle to reach the dealership. In other words, if Ford has nothing new to offer, the bleeding is going to continue for another four years.

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I say good. It's about time Ford get their act together, and if they don't survive, good riddance.

The Washington Post depicts Bill Ford as willing to take the company in a new direction, but not fast enough.

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Yep. That's what I've been saying, too.

I think the Ford engineers who have developed and are developing the alternative vehicles have a good picture where they are going. I think top management buys into this, but has a very fuzzy idea of how to accomplish it.

It remains to be seen if the management at Ford can see their way to achieve the goals they have set for themselves. As the article points out, the goals are clear but the means to get to them are not well spelled out.

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This is the kind of thing that really gets to me. Why are some people (in this case, the Big Three car companies and Ford in particular) so short-sighted about things that end up making huge differences in so many lives? Jon Stewart made a joke about this last night, and his basic point was that anyone reasonable would have guessed that the huge SUV boom couldn't last forever. I don't know if that's true, but it's more sad than funny that thousands of American jobs are going to be lost partly because American car companies didn't catch on to the hybrid idea long ago.

Hybrid cars make economic sense. Having better products, by which I mean more efficient products that still do the job they're intended to do but use less to do it, is always a good long-term strategy. Whether not realizing or acting on this was a fault in the Ford management or elsewhere in the company, I have no idea.

My family has always bought American cars (it's a union thing involving my late grandfather). When it came time for me to buy my first car, I assumed I would buy an American car, and I looked carefully at all my options. While not a car expert, I can do consumer research with the best of them, and there were simply no American car companies making cars I was interested in buying. None were hybrids (sorry FEH fans- it's still an SUV, so not on my list) and social responsibility mattered to me more than any other feature. I ended up deciding on the HCH '05, and I haven't regretted it. Still, when I hear news stories like this one, I remember my decision and sigh. If Ford and the other American car companies weren't even able to sell to people like me, predisposed to buy from them, then they really need to rethink their direction. If they had been smart enough to do that a while ago, maybe they wouldn't need to make so many layoffs now, maybe there would be more hybrids on the roads, maybe American cars would be a bigger piece of the market, and maybe our national gas consumption would be lower.

Having worked for large corporations myself, I know that a large corporation has huge inertia...just like a long speeding train.....very difficult to stop, even if one can see in advance, that there is an accident ahead.

Another factor is the short term focus on stock value. Don't get me wrong, I believe stock value is important. But focusing on such a short period (quarter) won't let you focus on the issues 5 or 10 years from now.

Here's my big gripe with the Ford/GM downsizing: they aren't cutting from the top. If they would get rid of 10 useless executives that make $24 million/year each, it would save 6,857 workers' jobs (assuming a $35k pay grade.) My guess is that the useless millionaire parasites will give themselves a huge bonus for "cutting" payroll so decisively.