Alan Mulally Retirement Plans - Good or Bad for Ford?

in Ford
Okay, it's too early to evaluate Ford's new CEO, but given Ford's importance in the automotive industry, and the huge challenge Mullaly faces, I thought it would be a good idea to open a topic to discuss how he's doing. I'm sure there are many Edmunds readers who, like me, wish him much success.
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Ford does NOT have a decade to get this done.
One interesting paragraph noted that in the past, when Ford hit a crisis, it started to make the changes now being pushed by Mulally, but a hugely successful model (F-150, original Taurus and Explorer) removed the urgency. The success was welcomed, but it encouraged Ford to return to "business as usual."
The article also hinted at the need to drop brands, but it only mentioned a possible sale of Jaguar, Land Rover and Aston Martin. It did say that a big test would be what Ford does with Volvo. I hope that Ford doesn't sell it, because much of what is good about the Five Hundred and Freestyle came from the Volvo DNA. This is a connection worth exploiting. There was no mention of jettisoning Mercury.
In the past, when Ford had its back up against the wall, it came up with a winner - the Model A, the 1949 model, the Taurus, the Explorer - in the nick of time.
In today's crowded and brutally competitive market, it is a lot harder for any company to come up with a big hit, let alone one that can save the company. Ford needs to fix its vehicle development processes, streamline its brands, get costs under control and leverage its global resources.
Oh, and change its corporate culture to facilitate these moves.
Mr. Mulally, I want you to succeed, but you'll be needing all the luck you can get...
Thanks.
Of course, the real test of Ford's turnaround will be in how its new products are received in the marketplace, since the company can't shrink itself into prosperity.
Rocky
Rocky
For info of Henry Ford: http://www.hfmgv.org/exhibits/hf/
As a import fan(Honda and Mazda guy) I don;t look at what I'm buying as foreign or American its just what I like to buy. Lets admit it besides Chrysler in the 90's Ford and GM just put any product out there and expected Americans to buy it no matter what it was.
As far as PR campaigns people have had good luck with Toyota's and Honda's. I'm in no way a Toyota fan(but I respect what they have done) because their product like Ford and GM's in the 90's doesnt strike a chord with me right now. I think the "Buy American" and being partriotic is very 80's/early 90's. Its a free market and GM does sell cars outside the US just like Honda and Toyota sell cars here.
I do want Ford and GM to survive yeah but that doesn't mean I have to buy from them if they don;t have the product I want.
personally, i have never had anything really bad happen with the fords i have owned. my wife had a celica that was a pain, and it was not an enjoyable car to drive. that was many years ago, but i decided something that i can enjoy every day is worth more to me that something i don't enjoy, although the resale is better.
I think while it's true that the Fusion is more the spiritual successor than the Five Hundred, Taurus *was* always the mid-sized family sedan, which due to cars' getting big again is now about at Five Hundred-size. I remember how big the Toyota Avalon seemed when it first came out...now the Camry is the same size.
The biggest problem with the Five Hundred IMO was its lack of power, which I understand Ford is going to address with the 3.5l V6. The hopefully less conservative styling will be a big help too (but for godssake don't repeat the previous 3rd-gen styling atrocities...)
Next steps: keep the Taurus name on it for awhile, but continue to refine/improve it as the years go on. Don't dump it in rental fleets, and don't start "de-contenting" it. After a year or two, reintroduce an SHO version with Ford's great 4.6l V8 coupled with the already available AWD system as a forward-looking version of the American muscle-sedan.
The Five Hundred IMO isn't a bad car, and there's a lot of potential in it..when it first came out, I remember seeing it displayed at the Washington auto show. I was amazed at the amount of people crowded around a (to me) sedate sedan. The crowd was only slightly smaller than that at the Mustang display. :surprise: Sure, the Mustang crowd was younger, but middle-aged buyers are the ones with the cash to actually buy the new cars they see at shows...
I consider the Fusion to be a direct competitor to the Camry, and the Five Hundred/Taurus to be Ford's counterpart to the Avalon. Regardless, there are precedents in the industry for applying old names to new cars that differed in size and positioning from the originals that carried the name. For example, Zephyr was a Lincoln, then a Mercury, then a Lincoln again, before Ford discontinued the name this year. The main thing will be whether the Taurus will be competitive in the marketplace, and I'm confident it will be.
Ford screwed up the 500 by not offering a bigger engine at the initial launch. Yes I know they were locked into that engine because of previous contracts but talk about messing up an otherwise good car.
It's not on anyone's radar screen anymore. With as competitive as the automotive market is, you only get one chance to make a first impression.
Err replace that 4.6 V8 with the yamaha V8 from the XC90 and new S80.
Much much better engine then the 4.6.
even a 3 valve 4.6 which shows less power than the yami, would be a great option, if they had a transmission that could handle it.
If the criteria for resurrecting names include models that sold a lot of copies, and were popular during better times for Ford, then Pinto and Maverick would qualify. One could argue that the Maverick was competitive in its day, and if it hadn't been for the gas tank hazard, the Pinto was reasonably competitive too. I suppose this says more about how bad the economy cars of the late '60s-early '80s were than their attributes(?!) of the Pinto and Maverick. In terms of better times at Ford, the company was in bad shape during the end of the Pinto's days, the early '80s.
:surprise:
That said, at least Mullaly realizes how utterly boneheaded many of Ford's moves over the last ten years or so have been. The idea of having all Fords start with F and Mercurys with an M was just silly. As was launching the 500/Montego with a way-too-weak engine. As was the Freestar, which torched a once-solid minivan business. And does anyone remember the Lincoln Blackwood? Had the dollars poured into that rat-hole been used to create a product someone might want to buy -- say, maybe, updating the long-neglected Ranger, once easily the top-selling small pickup -- Ford might not be teetering on the brink of disaster today.
Mullaly has a huge mess to clean up. Not all of his ideas are great, but at least he recognizes that things have got to change.
While it's unrelated to Mulally's leadership, the downsizing of Chrysler, which will result from its sale, will help Ford and GM somewhat, by reducing industry overcapacity.
Ford needs to:
1. Keep improving the Fusion, Five Hundred/Taurus, Freestyle/TaurusX, Mustang, Edge and F-150, as they are basically sound vehicles;
2. Get the European Focus here as fast as possible, as people are more interested in small cars, and a subcompact that is a cut above the usual fare would probably sell pretty well;
3. Develop more vehicles like the Flex;
4. Find a way to euthanize Mercury and focus on Ford and Lincoln.
And I agree that a Chrysler downsizing would help Ford and GM, as there is a core of buyers who will only purchase domestic vehicles (and most still consider Chrysler and Dodge to be domestic marques).
They would most likely turn to GM and Ford if Chrysler were to reduce capacity, or vanish entirely.
my neighbor across the street came home with his new mustang gt convertible.
next time i see him, i am going to give him a big 'man hug', for a couple of reasons. he bought a mustang gt, and it is a domestic vehicle.
maybe he bought alan a couple of more seconds to get the job done.
http://money.cnn.com/2007/04/05/news/companies/ford_execpay/index.htm
He may regret that remark. The media buzz at the show was that the honeymoon is soon over. With sales and market share continuing to slide and profit-hitting historic lows, Mulally needs to do something."
Ford’s Mulally Stays the Course (Auto Observer)
Rocky
Total revenue, including its finance arm, rose 5.4% in the three months ended March 31, reaching $43 billion from $40.8 billion, helped by currency translations but partially offset by lower volume.
Analysts polled by Thomson Financial had forecast, on average, a loss of 60 cents a share and sales of $34.45 billion.
Although it's moving in the right direction, Ford obviously has a long way to go.
Rocky
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070508/AUTO01/705080373/1148-
Wow, this as almost as interesting as the Hiltons..... :P
-Rocky
Ford, especially, and GM have a long way to go to become healthy and strong, but recent results are encouraging.
-Rocky
The Ford Fusion/Mercury Milan sedans ranked among the most reliable family cars, along with the Toyota Prius and Honda Accord, the magazine said.
"We used to recommend all Toyotas because of excellent reliability," Consumer Reports Auto Test Center Senior Director David Champion told the Detroit Free Press. "We're not going to do that any more."
Honda edged Toyota out of the top spot and Subaru moved to the No. 2 spot.
Of U.S. models rated, 93 percent of Ford, 67 percent of Chrysler and 49 percent of GM models had average or better predicted reliability, the magazine said.
Thats very good news for Ford that quality/reliability is really significantly improving. I wonder if Mulally is behind this significant quality/relability improvement that Ford has going on.
I know CR for the past few years has rated Ford as a whole more reliable than GM and Chrysler as a whole but we never heard how Ford was doing this good in reliability a few years ago.
Quality iniatives take time to work out.
Doubtless, this growth in quality was started before Mulally came on board.
Of course, he will get credit for it.
It's just like when the economy gets better. The sitting President gets the credit, even if he didn't do anything to deserve it.
Mercury sold 180,848 vehicles in 2006 — the division's lowest total since 1960 — and was 11 percent off that pace through the first nine months of 2007. Most industry observers expect a gradual death for Mercury. By 2012, it's a good possibility the last ever Mercury will roll off the line then.
While there have been rumors about Ford importing European cars to America and badging them as Mercury models, sources say this scenario is unlikely. Federalizing and importing foreign market cars is expensive and reengineering them for U.S. production is also costly. Whether the Mercury brand is worth this investment is highly questionable. GM used a similar strategy by aligning its Saturn and Opel brands, but Saturn was considerably stronger than Mercury when this decision was made.
http://media.ford.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=27455
I missed the Green Car Advisor blog post about it - Ford To Introduce Fuel-Saving Direct Injection Engines
ARM was smart enough to let some other inmates of the Adult Daycare Center of Boeing inherit the insects of production of the 787. There will be another delay in getting the DL off the ground
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