Ford Australia is set to hire sacked Holden engineers to develop cars for China

FORD Australia is planning to hire sacked workers from arch rival Holden to help develop new cars for China. The good news doesn’t stop there.

FORD Australia plans to hire 150 sacked Holden engineers in the coming months to develop new cars for China.

Last Friday Holden sacked the first of 200 Melbourne-based engineers that it will let go before Christmas, ahead of a further 400 engineering job losses before Holden closes its factory in 2017.

HOLDEN: Redundancies on the table after final workplace agreement

END OF YEAR: Holden to sack 300 engineers — half its engineering workforce

The switch means that Ford will become by far the largest employer of automotive engineers in Australia, taking its vehicle development workforce from about 1050 to 1200, roughly 10 times more than Holden.

Ford’s engineering boss for the Asia-Pacific region, expat Australian Trevor Worthington, who visited Australia from China this week to launch the last ever Falcon, said he would be “happy” to help Holden’s sacked engineers.

When asked if Ford would hire engineers from arch enemy Holden Mr Worthington said: “Why not?”

He said Australian engineers were trained to “world class” standards, Ford was about to ramp up extra work for foreign vehicles, and there is a ready supply of ex-Holden workers.

“The growth in our Australian engineering workforce over the next six to eight months … will be about 150 engineers,” he said.

Ford was not clear about which areas of expertise it would focus on but Mr Worthington said “we will get the right people for the right job”.

“Whether it’s chassis engineers, powertrain engineers, calibration engineers, instrument engineers … the work is cyclical,” said Mr Worthington, who expects the engineering workforce to remain stable at about 1200 employees “for the foreseeable future”.

Holden will have fewer than 150 engineers remaining once its factory closes in 2017, while Toyota is expected to have fewer than half that again.

Meanwhile Ford’s Broadmeadows car factory was given a boost this week with the new Falcon going into production — and demand is already outstripping supply, a situation Ford hasn’t found itself in for more than a decade.

Demand is so strong for the new Falcon XR8 performance flagship — at $55,000 the most expensive model in the range — that Ford is urgently trying to double production of that particular model.

Several dealers have sold out of their initial allocation and orders being taken today will be delivered in March.

Ford only planned to build fewer than 1500 of its XR8 sports sedan over the next two years, roughly 10 per cent of the Falcon’s sales mix — even though 37 per cent of all new Commodores sold today are a V8.

“We are definitely looking at increasing XR8 volume, it’s fair to say we’ve been overwhelmed by the customer response,” said Ford marketing manager David Katic.

“It’s now a matter of going back to (parts) suppliers to see if we can increase our orders.”

MORE: Limited edition Falcon GT most powerful police car ever

EXTRA: Ford Mustang returns to Australia after almost 50 years

The XR8 has the same supercharged 5.0-litre found in the previous Falcon GT and comes with the same performance brakes, sports suspension and wider tyres — but it costs at least $20,000 than the old Falcon GT.

This reporter is on Twitter: @JoshuaDowling