Ford Motor Co officials are working to provide the founder of the Chick-fil-A fast-food restaurant chain with the last Ford Taurus that rolls off the assembly line when production of the model ends on Friday.
Truett Cathy, 85, has had a longtime relationship with the Atlanta-area plant that makes the sedan, crediting the success of his first restaurant to business from Ford workers across the street.
Chick-fil-A spokesman Don Perry said on Saturday that Cathy had received "a commitment from the plant" to receive the last Taurus.
Ford spokeswoman Anne Marie Gattari said that the details were not completely settled, although the company is "working to make it happen."
"We want to sell him that last vehicle because we know how much it would mean to him," she said, adding that the deal was undecided because the last vehicles scheduled for production were meant to go into a rental fleet.
Cathy planned to display the last Taurus with many of his other collectible cars at his Atlanta headquarters and at his restaurants.
He opened his first restaurant, the Dwarf Grill, in 1946 with his brother. In 1961, he developed Chick-fil-A's trademark chicken sandwich and asked diners from the Ford plant in Hapeville to try it.
He opened his first Chick-fil-A restaurant in 1967 in Atlanta.
Earlier this year Ford announced that it would cease production of the Taurus after 21 years and sales of nearly 7 million vehicles.
Japan has deployed long-range missiles in a southwestern region near China, the Japanese defense minister said yesterday, at a time when ties with Beijing are at their lowest in recent years. The missiles were installed in Kumamoto in the southern region of Kyushu, as Japan is attempting to shore up its military capacity as China steps up naval activity in the East China Sea. “Standoff defense capabilities enable us to counter the threat of enemy forces attempting to invade our country ... while ensuring the safety of our personnel,” Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. “This is an extremely important initiative for
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) today accepted an invitation from Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to lead a delegation to China next month, saying she hopes to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations and bring stability to the Taiwan Strait. “I am grateful and happy to accept this invitation,” Cheng said in a statement from the KMT chairperson’s office. Cheng said she hopes both sides can work together to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations, enhance exchange and cooperation, bring stability to the Taiwan Strait and improve people’s livelihoods. At today's news conference, Cheng said any efforts to
MORE POPULAR: Taiwan Pass sales increased by 59 percent during the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the Tourism Administration said The Tourism Administration yesterday said that it has streamlined the Taiwan Pass, with two versions available for purchase beginning today. The tourism agency has made the pass available to international tourists since 2024, allowing them to access the high-speed rail, Taiwan Railway Corp services, four MRT systems and four Taiwan Tourist Shuttles. Previously, five types of Taiwan Pass were available, but some tourists have said that the offerings were too complicated. The agency said only two types of Taiwan Pass would be available, starting from a three-day pass with the high-speed rail and a three-day pass with Taiwan Railway Corp. The former costs NT$2,800
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and