clutchcargo

There had been a bunch of stuff said recently about Bill Ford's future at Ford and here is the news today.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/060905/ford_ceo.html?.v=3

iatacs19

whatever it takes to survive.

MDXLuvr

atleast Ford is smart enough to realize that.

cdelena

It seems to me that Ford's problems have been product development and marketing. They brought in a good business mind and that may address part of the problem but is he savvy enough to assemble a team of automotive experts to revive the product line?

Suzukaboy

Look for wings on the new Town Car and a cargo hold for all your stuff.

Wildncrazy

I'm anxious to see the new flying cars.

I've wanted one since the Jetsons!

mikegarrison

Alan had a great relationship with the engineering employees at Boeing. He was widely considered to be an excellent leader. Guess we'll see what happens, but Ford could have done a lot worse and probably could not have done much better.

Slamnasty

Even though I'm not a Ford guy, I wish 'em well with this. I think it was time for Bill to step aside, as he just has the family legacy in his corner. Not that that's a bad thing, but what I mean is he represents the old ways, and it's obviously the new way that is needed.

Getting to this quote, you are 100% right. I think GM has had Ford's @ss whooped since the 60s with their marketing and sales, and I think it shows even today. I think Ford has had a lot of very interesting concepts over the last several years, but they never execute on them. They have talent that's looking for someone to believe in them.

The same can be said of GM, but at least GM tries a few of their ideas out, like the SSR, Avalanche and roadster twins.

WarrenW

Don't let no-really or rockville see this thread, they'll swear it's a conspiricy by Honda, Toyota or...me or some shit like that.

Warren

PanteraKitty

AAhhh. How quickly we forget. How many years was Taurus #1 in sales? How many years was the F Series in the top 10? After the layoffs in the 70s, Ford's total production numbers were about half of GM's. They were doing that with 1/3 the employees that GM had.

I will have to admit that I think Bill Ford had a serious brain fart when they cut back on the fleet sales program.

GM has done their share of dropping the ball , too. Did you know that the Cobra was almost a Corvette? Research the Scaglietti Corvette some time. And the Cheetah was another one that they did not follow through on. The poor thing was intended to run against the Cobras, but sine they never reached the production numbers, it had to run against Jim Hall's Chaparrals.