TOM WALSH: Only the best will do for Mulally
BY TOM WALSH
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
September 6, 2006
The newly named chief executive officer of Ford Motor Co. drives a Lexus LS 430, the flagship luxury sedan from Toyota Motor Corp. that he unabashedly says he purchased because "it's the finest car in the world."
That fact alone tells us a lot about Alan Mulally, the 37-year Boeing Co. veteran who was introduced Tuesday in Dearborn as Ford's new president and CEO.
And it tells us plenty about the mind-set of Executive Chairman Bill Ford and the board of directors of Ford Motor, the iconic automaker struggling to survive in the early years of its second century.
Mulally, who led Boeing's recent comeback to overtake European rival Airbus in new commercial airplane orders, is a realist. He knows at Ford, he's not joining a company at the top of its game.
He's also candid. He knows Lexus cars are better than anything currently in Ford's lineup, and he doesn't care if Ford employees or the media hear him say it out loud.
And he's got some moxie, enough to think he can help put Ford Motor back on top of the heap in a brutally competitive global market.
Mulally's appointment also is proof that Bill Ford and the company's board finally, and fully, grasp the grim reality of Ford Motor's predicament in today's stormy auto market.
Ford Motor was a ship lurching in treacherous waters with the wrong product mix for current conditions, a management crew light on big-time executive experience and an earnest but overmatched captain -- Bill Ford, acting as chairman, CEO, advertising pitchman and chief bottle-washer.
"I had too much to do. I was wearing too many hats," Ford said Tuesday.
Ford Motor's sales had dropped from more than 4 million vehicles in 2000 to less than 3 million in 2005.
And then this year, the decline became a free fall, as skyrocketing gasoline prices sent sales of the bread-and-butter Explorer SUV and F-150 pickups skidding.
Despite all that, Mulally, at age 61, saw in Ford a challenge he couldn't resist.
Sort of a patriotic call to duty.
"The reason I have a Lexus," Mulally told me in an interview after Tuesday's news conference, "is that it's the finest car in the world. I studied all the cars.
"And this is also the reason why I'm here (at Ford), because Boeing makes the finest commercial airplanes in the world, and what was compelling to me was that Bill Ford, when he called me, Bill wanted to focus on making the best auto company in the world ...
"The reason he called was not to restructure, not to get rid of stuff, not to sell it off. He called because he wanted to make the finest automobiles in the world. And that's why I'm here," Mulally continued. "Because I think the U.S. can compete. I know they can compete. ... There's no reason why we can't be the best in the world."
Bill Ford added: "One of the things Alan talked to me about is that this is a patriotic decision. He left a great career in Boeing to take on a very difficult job in a town where he doesn't have any family, at a stage of his career where could easily be riding off into a well-deserved sunset. But he said, 'I feel it's the right thing for the country. Boeing's a great American icon. Ford's a great American icon. If I can help Ford get back to where it ought to be, I'll feel like I've done my part not just for Ford, but for the country.' "
Obviously, Ford isn't Boeing. And the car business isn't the airplane business.
Boeing slugs it out against just one chief global competitor -- Airbus -- while Ford is up against Toyota, General Motors Corp., DaimlerChrysler, Nissan, Honda, BMW, Hyundai and more.
Maybe Ford Motor has sunk into too deep a hole for Bill Ford and his candid new CEO to rescue it.
Let's hope not. Better they get cranking now than another three months or a year from now.
there is no doubt in my mind he will do the best for ford.
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