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Ford Motor Co.’s Management Odd Couple (newsweek.com)

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#1 ·
Newsweek.com: Ford Motor Co.’s Management Odd Couple



Excuse Me, Mr. Ford
How to tell the man whose name is on the building that you're overhauling the family firm he once ran.



Sept. 17, 2007 issue - As Ford Motor Co.'s sales continued to drop this summer, the company's new CEO, Alan Mulally, made a visit to the wood-paneled corner office of his boss, chairman Bill Ford Jr. Mulally, the former Boeing exec who is trying to turn Ford around, had a bold proposal: consider selling Ford's Volvo division. "No," Bill Ford responded. Volvo, Ford said, was one of the few profitable pieces of the car wreck that Ford Motor has become. "It's still a great brand with great values." Mulally countered that if Ford can't jump-start sales of the cars with your name on them, "none of the rest of this is going to matter." "I looked at him," Ford tells NEWSWEEK, "and I thought, 'You know, that's right'."

The relationship between the Ford family scion and his new chief is one of the oddest marriages in corporate America today. Normally, when an executive like Bill Ford presides over historic losses, he is shown the door. But, of course, Bill Ford is the great-grandson of Henry Ford. And the Fords have remained incredibly cohesive in their control of the 104-year-old automaker: a family member has served as chairman or CEO of Ford for all but 20 years of that history. Yet tradition goes only so far when you're losing money. During Ford's five years as CEO, drivers snubbed the company's guzzlers as gas prices soared. Last year Ford racked up $12.7 billion in losses.

So one year ago Bill Ford fired him-self as CEO and brought in Mulally, who made his name reviving Boeing's commercial-airline business after 9/11. Staying on as executive chairman, Ford still goes to work every day in an office 15 steps away from his successor. But the man who was once the star of the company's TV commercials has kept such a low profile that one wag asked a company exec, "Is Bill Ford in witness protection?" Ford says he didn't want any confusion about who is in charge now. "There's no time for any kind of political garbage," he says.

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#4 ·
Re: Newsweek.com: Ford Motor Co.’s Management Odd Couple

When Henry Ford II took over the company in 1945, Ford was in a similar or maybe even worse shape than it is today. HFII knew to acknowledge that he wasn't ready for the top post so he recruited Ernie Breech from the Bendix Corporation (a GM subsidiary) who was lined up for the top job at GM. After Breech, HFII look for help elsewhere hiring a group of young Army officers known as the Wiz Kids. HFII still ruled with an iron fist for 15 years but he was wise enough to know that he wasn't executive material.

Bill Ford learned the same lesson the hard way. Rick Wagoneer also saw this after years of f... ups, but was faster to seek for help. Lutz and Mulally have been entrusted with the titanic task of saving the American car industry. On top of that Mulally has the extra task of vindicating its tradition and biggest name.

Godspeed Alan!
 
#7 ·
Mulally quickly learned how Ford's insular culture rejects outsiders. Soon after he arrived, execs began going to Bill Ford, saying the new guy didn't know what he was doing. Ford brushed them off, saying: "Talk to Alan. He's going to make the decisions." Mulally decided that some of those executives, whom he won't name, should find employment elsewhere. "People went around me," he says. "Once."
Ford still lags behind GM in its efforts to emulate Toyota, but analysts say at least it finally has the right idea. "It really took somebody from the outside," says Ford, "to come in and see the blindingly obvious."
These two quotes are most telling. I am buying more Ford stock tommorow.
I did so with GM along time ago, and have made some money. What people did not see with GM was the small things, GMDAT, Epilson, etc.. GM is not going to be #2 for long if Toyota takes top spot. GM is now a lean mean global giant with a cost advantage over toyota.
With Cadillac, Buick and Hummer following Chevy world wide, plus a resurgent Saab, and a global Opel, GM is going to kick butt, and so will Ford, if they follow a global model.
 
#9 ·
If it is the 2010 Taurus, it is too closely styled to the MKS.
Lincoln needs to be seperated from Ford by more than just a grille, tail lights and engine choices.
Though Taurus's greenhouse needs changing, they shouldn't do so at the expense of Lincoln.
 
#10 ·
my vote is on 2010 Taurus .. but i am shooting from the hip.
Igor

s'ok if I repost your clearer version, Igor? (what software did you use?)


I'm gonna 'hedge' (watching waaaay to much stockmarket channel)
Still say the C-pillar is Orion.........ish, the rear fascia and tail lights (humor me) look Orion....ish too.
but guess that could just be that style/theme being applied to a nother car.
&
could be the angle but the front overhang looks practically non-existent - - Rwd - - GloRP*?


* GloRP = Glorious/GlobalRwdPlatform
 
#11 ·
I re-did an old(ish) Orion chop's rear end to demonstrate my halucination

tho it wasn't planned, think it has some similarities to the '09 Fusion rendering


edit - adding on to & semi-retracting my GloRP theory
it's an early U.S.Falcon styling exercise! - explains why the (scale-model)clay is in Dearborn - pre-Huntsman Orion - also why they'd let it be in the photo, superceded by GloRP.
 
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