Feeling The Pain At Ford Motor Company

[ThomWV]

http://money.cnn.com/2007/04/05/news/companies/ford_execpay/index.htm?cnn=yes

If you or I worked at Ford we'd be concerned about our jobs and our future.

"April 5 2007: 6:31 PM EDT


NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Struggling Ford Motor Co., which posted a record $12.7 billion net loss in 2006, gave its new CEO Alan Mulally $28 million for four months on the job, according to the company's proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday."

More ...

[Demeter]

1. I Could Drive Ford Into the Ground For a LOT Less!

and if I screwed up, and they started making the cars people wanted to buy, oh well!

[Clark2008]

4. They do make cars I want to buy.

I just bought one less than a year ago - the new Mustang is awesome.

And, I can afford it. I can't afford the new hybrids. And, most of them are ugly and/or too small for me to do battle with the semi's on the interstate I must travel to get to work.

The problem - as with any American corporation - is health care costs and over-the-top CEO pay.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

2. Nobody could have predicted...

that building over-sized gas guzzlers during high gas prices would lead to financial problems, again.

[Captain Angry]

3. Ford dug a hole.

They designed vehicles that were popular and had a high profit margin. When oil was cheap, people bought these vehicles and Ford was able to make some good money.

They did not clean up their reputation for low quality.
They did not design the "bullet-proof" sedan to take over for the Taurus.
They have huge legacy costs built into each car to pay for pension and health care that the foreign companies do not bear.
They have not embraced hybrid technologies across their product line. Just 20,000 of the Escape.

I don't care that they paid him $28M. The boards of directors and executives in corporate America do this. It's nothing new. It distracts from what Ford has to do for the couple hundred thousand employees that are still there.

If Mulally brings some of the Boeing ideas over, Ford has some upside. Ford needs to do something huge and fast. Showing off celebrity designed vehicles that sell at the high end in quantities under 10,000 is useless.

Ford needs to design a Taurus replacement fleet vehicle that DOES NOT FAIL for 100,000 miles and gets 35+ MPG. Ford has the people and the technology to do this. It seems to me that they're waiting for the government to go protectionist and tariff the crap out of the foreign companies so they don't have to change.

Starting there, they need to increase fuel efficiency by 5 or 10 MPG every 3 years.

The #1 vehicle sold in America in 2006 was the Ford F-150. They sold nearly 470,000 of them.
Vehicles #3,4,5,6,7,9 and 10 were all sedans.
Japanese sedans were #3,4,5,6, and 9, which accounted for 1,450,000 units sold.

The Ford F-150 will always have a following. There are segments of the country that need a truck for work, weather, etc. But Ford needs to begin a massive attack on the Camry/Accord segments immediately with quality and fuel efficiency.

Ford does not need to leave the shores, dump their employees or anything. They need to release a solid vehicle immediately, market the crap out of it, and prove they're worth being a car company. If they don't want to do it, they should fold up shop, sell the assets, and shame the United States by having one of its greatest business icons die a horrible death.


Get the feeling that SOMEBODY is doing a report on Ford for Business School? :-)

[Clark2008]

5. The new Fusion is set to take over the Taurus.

And, it's affordable.

Now, I'm not sure of its gas mileage, though. My Mustang gets about 28 mpg and it's a six-cylander. That's not bad.

[Captain Angry]

7. Did you see that Ford is renaming the Ford 500 to the Ford Taurus next year?

And the Freestyle is becoming the Taurus-X

The Fusion is supposed to be pretty nice. But it's not as cool as it could have been.

And 28mpg on the Mustang is nice. When they want to, Ford can design a good looking car.

The Mustang is a niche vehicle, and should be done just to keep the engineers sharp. But they need to get some work on efficient cars that last.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

6. This all seems intentional to piss us off. Why is this being done?

[Captain Angry]

8. From what I can tell...

Today you see boards in many sectors made up of executives from businesses in other sectors.

Company A has CEO-A, and Directors 1,2,3,4,CEO-C.

Company B has CEO-B, and Directors 6,7,8,9,CEO-A.

Company C has CEO-C, and Directors 5,10,CEO-B,11,12.

Company A's board of directors decides to pay CEO-A $20,000,000.
Company B's board of directors decides to pay CEO-B $25,000,000.
Company C's board of directors decides to pay CEO-C $22,000,000.

Their votes as directors ensure the other directors vote for their pay to increase at their companies.


This is an ugly example, but I think you can see where I was going with it.

It's important to remember, no CEO says "Wow, that's too much, you should cut that down a little." So when you see an obscene payout, it's important to realize who gave it to them. They didn't make up the pay package, the board of directors did.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

9. Rape and pillage while the gettin's good. Yep.