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 ...
All the Asian car makers are getting clobbered in the sedan market. It is not just the US automakers.
Drive a new Sonata, it’s nothing like those old cars. Heck, the early Civics and Corollas were crappy too.
how the hell does a furniture seller and athletics director go directly to CEO of a car manufacturer??
The cult of scientific management, coupled with the short-term thinking imposed by our debt-based currency and the stock market.
The E-350/450 are still available, but only as cut-away cabs. You have to supply the box in the back.
A friend of mine has one as a service vehicle and loves it.
Compact and subcompact crossovers are easier to drive and get in and out of than a car, and nominally more expensive.
I’ve owned three Fords and they were all pieces of junk. That has kept me from owning a Ford for 45 years now.
Youre complaining about a 14 year old Truck having broken parts..
Geez youre a tough customer.
BTW, I just received my complete stainless steel brake lines because the old ones rusted out. And don’t get me started on the instrument cluster. The truck is a catastrophy.
You aughta check out the complaints on the internet. Sure, no vehicle is perfect, but these things are a CF.
BTW, It has 106K miles on it. My 2013 Scion FRS has 144k on it with no issues except for a water leak in a tail light. And my 2006 Scion XB has 197k on it with ZERO problems. Zero.
And even my 2001 Chrysler 300m went 196k miles before I traded it in with a single problem: The radio failed in the first year.
Etc. I’ve owned 31 cars in my life and this truck hearkens back to the days of all sorts of nickel and dime parts failing because the japanese had not forced the american manufacturers to up their game. I’ve come to expect cars to work for hundreds of thousands of miles except for normal wear and tear.
Brake lines rusting out (and it is a chronic problem in these vehicles) is not wear and tear. Dead instrument clusters is no wear and tear. Leaky exhaust gaskets is not wear and tear. Failed dashboard control knobs are not wear and tear.
They are bad design.
I have a 1979 Buick station wagon with over 213,000 miles that I have been driving for over 36 years.
I also have a 1976 Chevy 1 ton dually 454 truck with a 4 speed Granny Low transmission that has over 348,000 miles on it. I have driven that truck over 32 years, towing horse trailers.
Normal maintenance, and Summit gives me NO GRIEF about needing pats for old vehicles. They NEVER have let me down.
I worked alot of jobs in the 50’s & 60’s where we had ‘no breaks’. Lunch & allowed to go to bathroom. That’s all. No smoke breaks, either.
I bought a new Pontiac station wagon in Feb 1965. I sold it in 1998 or so with over 444,000miles on it. I wish I still had it.
Yes, I’m noticing that the driveline actually seems to be fine. It’s everything else. Like the old Alice cooper song lyrics. Doc says my teeth are ok, but my gums gotta go.
M instrument cluster is “on again, off again” after having it rebuilt a few years go. It works fine when it’s working, and is completely dead when it’s not.
And in my entire life I’ve never owned a vehicle where the brake lines rusted out. This includes my 1954 chevy and 1954 ford, one of which I retired in the early 80’s and the other in the late 70’s. But it’s a chronic problem with these trucks, which may be why it’s so easy to find brake lines for them.
I also can’t park it for two weeks without the battery going dead. I’ve decided to pull fuses until I find the bad circuit and I’ll just pull the fuse whenever I park the truck for more than a day.
Ding, ding, ding - we have a winner.
If consumer demand changes, Ford will be back in the US sedan market in no time. Ford will still sell a domestic version of the Focus, so that platform is readily available for different body variants if consumer demand suddenly changes. It will also have the Mustang. So it is not like Ford completely abandoned the passenger car market and will have to revamp a sedan line from ground zero if it needs to change its product mix. Ford retains a lot more response flexibility than its critics are recognizing.
What’s kinda funny is that one of my fairly new friends’ son has an auto salvage business and he deals ONLY in General Motors trucks. :)
But I’ll never buy from him, for obvious reasons.
I forgot- The electric clock on the passenger side of the dash still works just fine. When someone gets in to Buick ,they are surprised to find that clock still works....I love it.
>>>Nissan Cube<<<
Did your Seeing Eye Dog like sticking its Head out the Window?
I forgot about the brake lines. And the gas lines. And the evap lines. I bet someone at GM got a nice bonus for saving 2/10 cent per truck and leaving it to the owners to spend hundreds replacing all the fluid lines prematurely.
I’ve rebuilt the transmission 4x and the transfer case twice, but other than that, the driveline’s bulletproof ;)
I was raised on GM. Would have bought them essentially forever, but there’s no way in heck I’d ever buy another. The risk of getting screwed is too great.
Yes, it is the newer ones that seem to have issues. Well, that and their “not ready for prime time” cars like the x Bodies and the Vega, both of which I, regrettably, owned.
I currently own the silverado and three Scions. My next car will be a Camry. I’ve just gotten used to cars that simply do not fail.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.