Wallpapers
Ford’s Future is Still Ford Tough
26Mar
In a market where intense financial strain seems like an understatement, one U.S. auto company is showing growth. While, General Motors and Chrysler have both turned to the government for bailouts, one Wall street brokerage gave its stock a “buy” recommendation: Ford.
Featured on CBS’s Early Show, co-anchor Harry Smith met with Ford CEO Alan Mulally exclusively to discuss the company’s frankly, surprising and apparent success in an industry which seems to be suffering the most.
It was part one of a weeklong series, “Early across America,” looking at stories of hope and optimism amid all the economic gloom sweeping the nation.
“If you’re looking for that tiny glimmer of hope amid all the economic doom,” said Smith, “the place to find it might be at the gleaming, green, state-of-the-art Ford truck plant in Dearborn, Mich. It has three shifts are working 24 four hours a day, seven days a week, turning out Ford F 150 pickup trucks. “Every single truck has been spoken for,” Smith continued. “A buyer or dealer wants it, which basically means it has a ‘sold’ sign on it”
Mulally became CEO for Ford just two and a half years ago. One of the first things he implemented with his new lead was a plan to restructure the company’s debt, which now make him a hero in and industry seeking bailout funds.
Second, Mulally refocused the brand. “We had ended up in the place where we had a lot of brands. So we had Aston Martin and Jaguar and Land Rover and Volvo (see editor’s note below) and Mazda so clearly, when you need to focus, you need to focus in the toughest of times. So one thing we came together on was let’s focus on the Ford brand and we divested all those other brands”.
“What we decided,” he said to Smith, “was that we’re going to be in every market, we’re going to go back to our roots and focus on Ford. … We’re going to have small, medium and large vehicles, cars, utilities and trucks. We also decided we’re going to be best-in-class in quality and fuel efficiency and safety, and also offer the best value.”
Finally, he went to work with the unions to make Ford more competitive. His current agreement with the United Auto Workers is expected to align Ford with the competitive Japanese automakers who build in the United States. “We have aligned the wages to the real value,” Mulally says, “all the work rule changes that we have made, that we now are competitive with our foreign competitors inside the U.S. and we can make cars inside the U.S. profitably, which is a tremendous development for the U.S. and also for Ford.”
Ford made money in the ’90s selling pickups and SUVs but, to survive in the future, Mulally is convinced there needs to be more: “We made a commitment that every vehicle, no matter what its size, whether it’s a car, a Fiesta, a Focus, a Fusion, a Mustang, an Escape or an Explorer, all the way up to a 150, no matter what the vehicle size, every year we’re going to improve the fuel efficiency and the quality and the safety, and then the American public can decide exactly what vehicle works for them.”
In the meantime, he committed to improving mileage and quality.
But his biggest challenge may be persuading a generation of Americans that American cars are just as good as those from the foreign competition — truly a case, Mulally says, of, “Have you driven a Ford lately?”
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