Posted on 05/04/2018 6:49:15 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Ford's new CEO, Jim Hackett, just announced a bold strategic move for America's most enduring automaker: abandoning the car business. Hackett completely reversed former CEO Alan Mulally's full-line strategy to focus on trucks and SUVs. A 3 percent jump in Ford's stock price validated Hackett's decision, but that adrenaline shot could be short-lived. Jettisoning automobiles may prove fatal for Ford, leaving the market to GM and foreign producers.
Bowing to short-term shareholder pressures that felled predecessor Mark Fields, Hackett is undoing 115 years of Ford's automobile legacy. Unlike General Motors CEO Mary Barra, labelled a "car gal" for her 38 years in the business, Hackett has no experience in automobiles. He comes from thirty years of making furniture and most recently as interim athletic director at the University of Michigan.
Founder Henry Ford didn't create the automobile, but he turned it into "every person's vehicle" in launching the Model T in 1908. In 1913 he introduced the first moving assembly line. The following year he offered a fair day's work for a fair day's pay, doubling wages to $5 per day to enable his workers to enjoy an adequate standard of living and be able to purchase the cars they produced.
That rich history may seem irrelevant to today's global world. Not so. When Alan Mulally became CEO in 2006, he fully embraced Ford's heritage and restored its focus on automobiles, insisting Ford could make money in a full range of cars by being cost competitive with foreign automobile plants in the South....
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
“The following year he offered a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay, doubling wages to $5 per day to enable his workers to enjoy an adequate standard of living and be able to purchase the cars they produced.”
No unions involved, btw. He also introduced the 5 day work week and the 8 hour work day. Again, no union involved.
L
Talk about tearing down monuments...
Another beans-counter with no experience “improving” a major corporation. It worked really well for Sears, didn’t it?
I’m betting on Jim’s analysis over Bill’s....
Dump the low margin products!
I have a 2008 Ford E350 which has had a very useful, but hard life. I am coming back to the USA this summer and was thinking of buying another, only to find out that Ford does not make them anymore, replacing them with the Ford Transit.
My soul is crushed to find that Ford has literally cut its throat.
Anyone got an idea what vehicle can come close to a Ford E350XL?
I have a 2004 Silverado Z71 that takes me back to the 1960’s, where everything on your car broke, right down to the heater fan control. I swore my 1980 Buick skylark would be my last GM vehicle, but I thought I’d give ‘em one more chance.
Never again. Ever.
Just as gasoline prices are moving up, Ford moves out.
>> Bowing to short-term shareholder pressures ... Hackett has no experience in automobiles ... thirty years of making furniture and ... as interim athletic director at the University of Michigan.
In other words, the “swinging Dick of the quarter”. I’ve seen enough of these asses in my years on earth.
(Love my F-150 town truck, F-250 horse hauler, and the wife’s Taurus, BTW.)
he also increased the speed of the assembly lines by 15%.
No such thing as a lunch break or a coffee break in Ford plants. Eight hours on the assembly line was expected.
To go to the bathroom, your immediate supervisor had to take your spot on the line. Ford put company police in the bathrooms to make sure, as soon as you were done, your butt was back on the assembly line, Again, no union involved.
This is a death blow to Ford.
Cars are important to build and maintain brand loyalty. Many older folks, (including myself), want a car because it’s a little cheaper, and easier to drive.
Younger people buy small cars because it’s all they can afford.
Ford is doing the equivalent of the guy in the commercial who has 14 drivers in his bag. Ford is in big trouble.
“No such thing as a lunch break or a coffee break in Ford plants.”
I never said the man was perfect.
L
Compacts and sedan sales are getting clobbered with maybe the exception of luxury sedans. People are buying the smaller crossovers instead.
Ford continues to build and sell small cars all over the world.
It will just not sell sedans in the US.
If demand returns, it’s a simple matter to send some little Fords here.
The reporters have no idea what they are talking about
Ford is playing long ball
I’m telling you at the bottom of this is the CAFA standards. Ford was convinced HRC would win and the impossible standards would stay. They could not reverse course.
In other words, an organized crime background.
It’ll be weird if/when Ford is a truck & SUV company... that also makes the Mustang. I guess if tractor company Lamborghini could have a sports car in its lineup, then why not? Still, seems likely that development & production costs of odd-man-out Mustang would increase. Just a hunch. I don’t have experience in automotive industry accounting, but common sense would suggest that the fewer passengers cars you build, the fewer opportunities for economies of scale, etc.
I enjoyed my 75 Nova SS for a few years. Of course, it had been highly modified by the time I got it . . . I needed new tires fairly quickly . . .
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