The Big Picture: Saving Ford - An American Icon Struggles To Survive

It's odd that a company and country that led the world in car manufacturing has let it's self fall so far behind.

Is an unimaginative, conservative and gas greedy consumer been to blame? Or is it the politicians or the marketing men?

Surely the marketing men have been taking the soft option over the years pushing slabsided ugly behemoths on a gullible public.

Ok if you need pickup trucks..design decent ones...ditto for SUVs...don't just stuff ageing engines into chassis left over from sherman tanks.

Heads up, smell the future....else before you know it you'll all be driving Chinese or Indian electric cars!

No , the problem Ford has is unions , socialism , and for some unknown reason a need to support every off the wall party they can find.

fat ?

Pot...kettle.

just in case you haven't noticed most of the cars in Europe are owned by Ford , GM or Nissan.

Yes..The article...(or did you actually read it, or my post carefully) Talks specifically about the American market.

I havn't got the breakdown of how well they are doing in Europe.

Del : Perhaps you should in fact read before labeling!!

My comment was fist aimed at your indictment of American auto and buyers , and remind you that in that area your auto industry has done none too well.

The second aim was at where ford (while losing money) was spending money they did not have, the well documented "party donations" are an example of expenditures that simply have no place in the purported business ventures of FOMOCO, and are therefore a violation of managements fiduciary responsibilities , in my opinion.

Hey Jon,

Good for you...

Ford is making Great American Autos for the Great American Public.

APARENTLY NOT!

>>Is an unimaginative, conservative and gas greedy consumer been to blame? Or is it >>the politicians or the marketing men?

As with any business disaster, at least where a disruptive technology isn't involved, the only culpret is the management team. There is nobody else to blame.

Yup, I'll agree with that...(I'd sort of lumped them in with politicians and marketing men...e.g. politicians within the company)

Anyhow..just to clarify..

These are the guys with the golden handshakes, the final salary pensions, and yearly bonuses despite company losses?

Maybe I'm not allowed to ask this as it maybe constued a 'Socialist'?

This is a moderated forum, folks. Several comments have now been edited.

Crikey! Are there some nerves jangling here? The only place short sighted companies go is out of business, no matter how big the company.

Hah! I refer to this thread.........

Stuck in the past

What's wrong with Ford???? The start to check the answer, refer to the 4/26/07 blog about David Halberstam's book "The Reckoning". Read the book. Even though it was written in the mid 1980's, it does a very good job outlining how Ford's management style over the decades has led to its current problems.

Should the government bail out Ford? I don't know, and it scare's me because of the Chrysler precedent. Who would benefit most, where would the money come from, and would it ever get paid back? Too many tough questions for me to ponder for this posting.

Just a quick thought- It might be said that US Automakers build cars for the sake of profit, if they please their customers it is a secondary consideration. Japanese automakers build cars to please their customers and for the sake of an elegant process, profits come as a secondary consideration. When the Customer's needs change substantially and suddenly, the Japanese are already ready and the US companies are left behind.

It seems it is far cheaper to achieve economy in response to customer's needs than in response to government mandate.

is it any wonder then, that toyota has surpassed GM to become the worlds largest auto maker? here

Think about the American auto manufacturers competition. Make the bottom line the Japanese, but close on their heels are the Koreans and soon to follow will be the Chinese.

The Japanese will beat your door down to get a new idea, a new method, an advancement in product or process. Not only that, if you are a supplier, you are expected to improve your product every year. (I worked for one of them for 15 years)

In contrast, the American manufacturers have been complacent and have been at best been reactive to change. First they squeezed their suppliers for every cent they could, changing suppliers for a $0.01 a part. Then they caught on to the idea of supplier loyalty, and closed the door to new suppliers at all levels who were not on their supplier lists. I have offered proven concepts to Ford GM and DCX and been told by purchasing that they were not accepting new suppliers, and that in fact I could not talk with an engineer.

A big chunk of the NA population does not care about anything but a big boat of a car. They only react when they perceive that gas is expensive, and to date, they have no clue what the rest of the world pays. (typically somewhere in the 1.5 to 2X range).

With managements eye firmly on the next quarterly report, none have had the nerve to try a new idea. None were up to the hybrid, even though hybrid packages were being discussed 5 to 7 years ago at the SAE show. Which of the big three would bring out a line of cars like the Scion or the Honda Element or Fit? None. DCX did not have the nerve to try the Smart car in the US.

Yes the UAW has extorted from and been gladly paid too much over the last 25 years, but it is not cost of the car that is killing the NA industry. It is lack of imagination.

I think that the sad fact is that the NA auto industry is headed toward a severly diminished future. I have little hope that even one of them will survive as more than a small fraction of their past magnitude, and in fact the big three names may disappear completely within ten years or less.

American manufacturers tend to take the short-term approach to keeping executive jobs and executive income at a high level. They send corporate profits out to shareholders rather than invest in the company.

I've always been a Ford man but it is a little hard to be loyal when your transmission fails at 70k and the front end literally falls off.I was appalled at the tie rod design that included a plastic socket that was so poorly designed I'm sure many people have died as a result.

When will they realize that saving a few bucks in the end catches up with you .I would have thought Ford learned a valuable lesson during the exploding Pinto era but apparently not .

I'm not sure any other company is immune they all have there problems .

While it is true that Ford among others rely upon a design philosophy which is some decades old, that still remains, in one way or another, what the customer basically wants, probably because he has not been shown or allowed to sample anything which is intrinsicaly more modern.

That aside, it often comes down to the old adage; What is a Camel.....a Horse designed by a committee, in the case of the Motor Industry that committee usually consists of too many accountants, nothing against accountants, providing all they do is do the accounting, when they start to influence design to save the odd penny here and there we end up with the sort of rubbish most of the big manufacturers have been foisting on the public for years.

The Japanese have a large share of the market not because they produce such great cars, you only have to look at the list of dogs they've produced over the years, but because they are responsive to peoples' aspirations and give them what they perceive to be value for money, often by simply including in the standard models all the extras that would put an american or european car into the stratsphere price-wise.

Quality will always succeed in the end, but it needs to be packaged properly, instead of having huge design departments, let a few dedicated car nuts and a few eager students loose with a pen and some paper, get a couple of seasoned engineers to put the concepts into practice, get hold of someone like the amazing Chip Foose and get him to put the package together and you'd have a car that people would want to buy, make enough of them and refine the manufacturing process and you'd be able to produce a car at the right price that people would want to buy.

If the unions don't want to play ball, close the factory and move it somewhere else where they do.

All the other stuff doesn't seem to work so why not try something different?

You only have to look at the garbage British Leyland turned out during the late seventies and early eighties to see what can happen to a great company when it is run with only one aim in mind, profit at any cost, well the cost was death of the companies involved.

Ford had Jaguar, Land Rover and Aston Martin, for God's sake with all that talent they must be able to come up with a car that lots of people want to buy. Why is it that enthusiasts can see this and Car Company Bosses cannot? Maybe because one has in mind a great car and the other a great profit, but this cannot be achieved by selling crap nobody wants to buy. "Build a better mousetrap and people will beat a path to your door" Who was it that said that?

I couldn't agree more..........

I bet I could agree more than you .

Could, couldn't, could...etc

(sorry...silly day)