Looks like the biggest gadget convention on Earth is becoming the place for big automotive announcements. You'll remember that two years ago at the Consumer Electronics Show, Ford and Microsoft announced their partnership on Ford's SYNC system, and last January General Motor's CEO Rick Wagoner chose Las Vegas to unveil the all-electric Cadillac Provoq concept. It was the first time in the convention's 40-year history an automaker had revealed a concept car to the world there.
This year it's Ford's turn again at CES, with CEO Alan Mulally taking the keynote spot. CES runs January 8-11 next year, but there's no word yet on what day Mulally will make his appearance. There's also no word on what he'll be saying or revealing to the thousands of people gathered in that Vegas ballroom. New SYNC features are a given, but will Ford also choose CES to roll out its plug-in hybrid project? Stay tuned for full coverage from the Autoblog team.
Gallery: CES 2008: Cadillac Provoq Live reveal
[Source: Automotive News - sub. req'd, Photo by GEOFF ROBINS/AFP/Getty]
Despite the rumors of contentiousness surrounding Kirk Kerkorian's Tracinda Corporation and its agitation in Dearborn, Ford reports that a recent talk between Executive Chairman Bill Ford Jr., CEO Alan Mulally, and the investment firm were informal and positive. Never a shrinking violet, 91-year-old Kirk Kerkorian has held large stakes of each of the Detroit 3 in the past. Tracinda's most recent foray into Ford's stock coincides with a shift by the Blue Oval away from its historically strong grounding in truck sales. Ford believes that the truck sales balloon has permanently deflated, and is idling plants and shifting production over to more fuel efficient vehicles as crude oil prices continue to ratchet up an economic squeeze.
Ford's already said "forget it" to a planned return to profitability in 2009, and its talks with Tracinda illustrate that Ford realizes it may not have the lock on better ideas. On the agenda at this particular meeting was an analysis of publicaly-announced details of "The Way Forward." Right now both Ford and Tracinda are coming away from the table repeating niceties, but if history is any guide, at some point Captain Kirk might start instigating in ways that are less than popular.
Ford's recent announcement to reduce its white collar workforce costs by 15% shows that Mulally & Co. are dead-serious about turning around the Dearborn, MI automaker. The newest twist in the FoMoCo saga takes the situation from serious to near desperate, as plant managers and union leadership are convening in Dearborn to discuss switching factories from truck to car production. Such a move is much easier to make in one of Toyota or Honda's flexible manufacturing plants, but Ford has plenty of facilities that are hardwired to build only one or two products. Analysts say that costs could be $250 million a year or more, which would make for a huge dent in Ford's already shrinking bank account.
The good news is that Ford is looking at its European products as the vehicles it needs to build State-side. We enthusiasts have been drooling over the Euro Focus, Fiesta, Mondeo, S-Max and Kuga for quite a while, but their fuel-efficient ways will have the masses finally thinking Ford first if they come here.
Ford won't announce its plans until July, and some details will be held back for months more, but The Detroit News has it on good authority that the Michigan Truck and Louisville plants will be part of the shift away from gas guzzlers. Louisville, which currently produces the Explorer, would shift to a unibody facility that produces cars and CUVs. Michigan Truck, which produces the Navigator and Expedition, will make room for the F-100, which will be smaller and likely more efficient than the F-150 on which it's based.
It's amazing what $4 per gallon gasoline can do to U.S. manufacturing, no? Ford just may be on the verge of the largest shift in the company's 105-year history, and we're all here to witness it. Here's hoping the plan works.
Towards the end of 2003, Ford unveiled the Freestar. It was a lousy minivan, and its name wasn't much better. From there the f-bombs started pouring in with the Freestyle, Five Hundred, and Fusion. Ford had a Shakespearean stranglehold on alliteration, but outside of the decent success of the Fusion, Ford's effed-up naming convention brought little name recognition to the Blue Oval's car lineup. When Allan Mulally came to town, he scrubbed the Freestyle and Five Hundred names for the much more recognizable and respected Taurus and Taurus X, but unfortunately the basic shape of the family haulers didn't change enough for customers to want them.
Detroit News Columnist Daniel Howes accurately points out that Ford is back to effing up the names of its vehicles. The Flex arrives this summer, and the Fiesta arrives in 2010. The News says Ford marketing head Jim Farley questioned why the Flex name would adorn Ford's full-size crossover, but even the ex-Toyota wunderkind is unable or unwilling to lose the F. We don't understand the fixation Ford has with the sixth letter of the alphabet. The Dearborn automaker's two most successful cars of the past 40 years are the Taurus and Mustang, both of which are decidedly sans F. As a matter of fact, the Camry, Civic, Accord, Impala, and Malibu are all alliteration-free. Sure, if the Flex and Fiesta are great products they'll sell no matter what they're called, but we'd like for Ford to give us an effing break.
Alan Mulally took over as Ford's CEO one year ago this month, and some of you may be wondering how he's doing. Business Week magazine says he's doing pretty good, actually, despite a 16% decline in sales last month, a stock price less than the cost of a used CD and the piecemeal selloff of PAG.
BW says Mulally gets an "A" in Profit and Loss for helping Ford earn a $750 million profit in the second quarter, even though the company expects a loss for the this year and next as well.
In Restructuring, Mulally slips to a "B," mostly because BW's author questions the decision to sell Volvo, and speculates that Ford's newish CEO wants badly to shut down the Mercury division. The article says that would be an expensive move that wouldn't be much of a gain for Ford.
As for Product, Mulally earns another "A" for better sharing of platforms and the work Ford is doing with its Australian arm on rear-wheel-drive cars.
Overall, Mulally gets an "A-" average, with his worst grade coming in Personnel, an area where BW says the CEO should at least consider bringing in some high-profile outside talent to round out his management team. We suppose Chrysler would get an "A" in that class.
Resurrecting the Taurus name isn't the only element from Ford's past that Alan Mulally thinks should make a comeback. Despite having one of their best lineups ever and winning accolades, customers have other makes further up on their list. Potential buyers who actually check out what Ford has to offer often come away impressed, and for this reason Mulally is suggesting a return to the "Have You Driven a Ford Lately?" tagline.
Please, no. Forward momentum, Alan. The return to the Taurus was smart, the name recognition alone is priceless. In that vein, Mulally wants to stop with the recent Ford practice of confusing and confounding consumers by switching model names so frequently. Horray! Building equity in a model name by sticking with it and continually improving the vehicle the badge is stuck to has worked quite well for Honda and Toyota with the Accord and Camry, and it'd be a smart thing for Ford to emulate. Inane 1980s marketing campaigns aside, Mulally is being effective at pushing Ford to operate their business in a smarter manner while building better product. There may be life in the old Tin Lizzie brand yet.
Hit the jump for a taste of Ford's 1984 television campaign.
Despite not being official, we've known for some time that Ford CEO Alan Mulally wants to increase the number of platforms shared by its U.S. and European divisions. It's something Ford fanboys have been demanding for some time, and yesterday Mulally officially confirmed that the next-gen Focus and Fusion would be global vehicles, sharing platforms with their counterparts across the pond. This will be in addition to the B-class car that's coming in the form of the new European Fiesta small car that will slot below the Focus in Ford's U.S. lineup.
The amount of overlap between Ford in the U.S. and Ford of Europe was one of the first things that surprised Mulally when he arrived at Ford exactly one year ago. He's quickly set about fixing the redundancy, but we won't likely see the fruits of his labor until 2010 or 2011 when the next Focus is expected to debut for both markets.
Ford execs have said that these cars will wear different styling and be tuned differently, but we've heard from inside the Blue Oval that a conflict between U.S. and Euro designers is growing, with the former group upset that its delicate balance of three-bar grilles will be upset by the Fiesta, and possibly other models, arriving with FoE's "Kinetic Design" theme.
The hallmark of the environmental debate is that there are so many important players on so many different sides. Eminent scientists and intellectuals have taken every side of the debate, challenging their eminent colleagues. When it comes to the two most involved and highly charged players, the automakers and politicians, things get even more curious. On the same day that Bush opposed a gas tax to give states more money to repair bridges, Alan Mulally said he supports the idea of a gas tax to encourage customers to buy more fuel efficient vehicles.
Mulally believes Congress' CAFE standards represent failed policy and has hurt automakers. Regulating fuel efficiency has, in his opinion, only lead to consumers buying more cars and driving more. While making sure to stress that he and Ford are all in favor of fuel efficient vehicles and environmental health, he wants some of the onus put back on consumers. He said, "I just think it's so important that we all join in this debate and we really decide what we want to do about energy security and global warming. A piece of that could be a tax."
In April, Mulally said Jaguar was part of the Way Forward plan and wasn't going to be sold, but needed to get its act together. News today, however, is that Ford has been trying to sell Jaguar and Land Rover to Fiat ever since February. Ford has also retained Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to help it sell all of the PAG brands, including Volvo.
The talks with Fiat -- held between Ford of Europe head Lewis Booth and Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne -- fell through last month. Fiat was interested in Land Rover because of the pace of SUV sales, and the fact that its "five brands are almost nonexistent in the growing global SUV market." Fiat was also interested in Land Rover's US dealership network, thinking Alfa might be able to pair up with them. Jaguar interested Fiat for its RWD platforms and V6 and V8 engines. But Marchionne ended the talks over fears its credit rating would be adversely affected by acquiring Jaguar and Land Rover.
PAG lost $327 million last year, but could be in the black this year, overall, having reported a $402 million pre-tax profit in the first quarter. Jaguar, however, has held things back: it has lost $500 million to $1 billion every year for the last six years, and Jag itself says it will be in the red this year and next. Neither Ford nor Fiat would admit to the talks, but Ford said it "is continuing to assess a number of strategic options for all of its operations. We're not specifying what they are and what we're evaluating."
The enhanced version of the Autoblog Podcast #63 has again been rendered out for your visual consumption. In part one of #63, we talk about the next Suzuki Swift coming to the United States. In the podcast's second section we give quite a bit of time to the Alan Mulally - George Bush - hydrogen explosion debate. Finally, we discuss Bub Lutz, and his comment that new EPA regulations could mothball GM's RWD program.
Check it out. Per your suggestions, we cut the podcast into three sections for smaller downloads, and we've also embedded sections two and three of the podcast after the jump. If you have any more suggestions on how to improve the enhanced version of the Podcast, let us know in the comments. We're working on a better distribution system than shoving all three in our current RSS feed of the audio-only version, so soon you'll be able to subscribe just to the enhanced version's RSS feed.
DOWNLOADPart One to your desktop (Suzuki Swift) DOWNLOADPart Two to your desktop (Mulally, Bush) DOWNLOADPart Three to your desktop (Lutz, RWD)
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