Mr. Alan Mulally. Yes! Pump your fist, you've earned the right!

The struggles of the ‘big three’ (Ford, GM, and Chrysler) American automotive giants’ are well documented. As recently as about 18 months ago, the talk was that Ford was on it’s way to imminent bankruptcy and that GM looked to be the strongest of the bunch with Chrysler floundering hopelessly. Well Chrysler hasn’t changed much, but Ford and GM has done a flip-flop. It is GM that need billions and billions of dollars of government loans to stay out of bankruptcy, and Ford has made some financially sound moves to stay out of the apocalyptic trouble.

The best move that Ford has made so far is hiring Alan Mulally away from Boeing to head up the struggling company. He has done what other good businessman would have done with the company. Ford sold whatever assets it had to liquidate for cashflow, got rid of underperforming brands (Land Rover and Jaguar), and has done a marvelous job of cutting cost and restructuring the company. Almost sounds like Carlos Ghosn of Nissan-Renault; Mr. Ghosn’s nickname is ‘Le Cost Killer’.

Not too long ago, Ford fell in love with its own brand-image and designed all their cars to resemble its oval logo (see Ford Taurus and Escort of 1996-2006). When that failed, they took the brand-imaging even further and decided to change all its failing models’ nomenclature to start with the letter ‘F’ – after Ford. The  popular Escort was replaced with Focus, Contour became Fusion, Taurus had a brief stint with Five Hundred, and the company even introduced new models such as Freestar and Flex. Way to confuse your buying public…

Too often the automakers are quick to change names of the existing vehicles, hoping that the public would think that it is an all-new car, but they do not address the fundamental flaws of the failing model. Spending hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing, rather than spending that money and making the cars better. This is GM’s core problem.

Ford has spent some time with customer focus groups in the recent years, much like the imports brands, and looked at what people are valuing in vehicles: better and simple to use electronics (Microsoft Sync), powerful drivetrains that are environmentally responsible, and designs that draw attention. At the same time, Ford has worked hard at getting the reliability of its vehicles up to par with the imports. Also, the company is actively becoming a force as a digital communications leader. Mr. Mulally actually is on Twitter, along with a couple of high ranking executives in the Michigan HQ.

KarFarm is excited to review and compare Ford’s upcoming new vehicles with what the rest of the world has to offer. 2009 is going to be a year of rebirth at Ford, with the introduction of new Mustang, Fiesta, Taurus (SHO), F-150 and a few other vehicles that haven’t been announced yet.

-KF