Motown could be getting its mojo back thanks to an unlikely tycoon who can look and act the part but doesn’t revel in it. He’s William Clay Ford, Jr., the great grandson of Henry Ford. He wears his passion for the environment and compassion for his employees on his sleeve.
A critical look at the vehicle lineup doesn’t quite indicate where Bill Ford is taking his company. If we go by the present product offerings, I can end here and take the afternoon off.
Take for example the Ford flagship –– the Ford 500. Rather than crack the dictionary to find a new and inspiring name, the company settled on an old one and, worse, settled on what can only be described as a compromise designed by committee. Looking like the parent of the VW Passat, its pansy powerplant will make sure its competitors kick a lot of dust on its hood.
But how about the new Freestyle? The marketing team picked a good name but design and engineering forgot to manufacture a vehicle to match. It’s one of several boxes Ford offers. This is a real shame when you think that Ford owns Volvo, which specialized in stylized box shapes for decades. Couldn’t somebody have checked out the archives for a clue? Never mind, I’ll take the Nissan Murano.
And then there’s the Mustang: mostly muss, little tang for my money.
These vehicles and others are the ones that we would have predicted Ford would make. Better than ones they made in the past but not truly innovative or trend setting.
Look for that to change as Bill Ford, a bona fide risk taker, pushes the company to dramatically increase its production of hybrid cars and trucks. If that’s not risky enough, he is pushing to ultimately produce recycled, reusable cars. This indicates that Ford is taking the long look at car manufacturing rather than focusing on just jumping the next quarterly hurdle.
That may seem strange since Bill Ford may not have a lot of time to fix the ailing company. The company has scored the terrible trifecta: a market share slide, a plummeting stock price and shamelessly inefficient plants.
Of course, this got Wall Street and board members riled enough to call for cost cutting measures. Unfortunately, like other companies under similar pressure, Ford took the easy way out and announced that it would close almost a quarter of its North American plants and eliminate the 25,000 jobs that went with them.
There’s no doubt that Ford needs new, exciting designs. The company also needs to increase quality –– not just meet Japanese quality but leapfrog it.
I think the only way this can happen is to give the workers more control of every aspect of running the company. Ford, as well as many other automakers, doesn’t have complete buy in from its workers. The company recently had to enforce a parking lot policy that requires workers who don’t drive Ford products to park their vehicles in the back lot. Strangely, loyalty to the products they build is not a given even though their jobs are at stake.
It is more crucial than ever to have the full commitment of the workforce. That may mean doing something really radical. With the long look that Bill Ford is taking, I wonder if he and the board have ever considered an Employee Stock Ownership Plan.
That may be the only way to achieve the goal of better built cars that even the workforce would buy.
