Quote:
Originally Posted by Islander
If you read the financial statement, most the "profit" came from cost cutting, plant closures, union concessions and, yes; higher sticker prices for new models. I am not impressed
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Islander, you need to understand the history of Ford before making this statement.
I can go back to the early 70's with their marriage to Mazda (I'm a Mazda girl) but for the sake of brevity, we can just start at the start of this century and I'll gloss over the bits and just state the highlights relevant to this discussion.
Ford was making good profits in the mid to late 90's when in 2001 their tires started blowing up... remember that? That event caused Ford over FIVE BILLION dollars LOSS just in 2001 alone! Because of that event, Ford ranked LAST in vehicle quality and safety, Ford's name was mud in the car industry. That was a tough challenge.
To rise up to the challenge, Ford fired Nasser -their CEO, and got a new one - William Ford, Jr (yes, Henry Ford's great grandson), and this new CEO made a commitment to rebuild Ford's image. This new CEO did what Toyota has always done - strive to be best in class, not just competitive - which means, building cars anticipating what people want in quantities anticipating market share, and build them good.
Therefore, to meet that goal Ford had to close several plants in 2002 through 2006 as Ford continues to incur losses from tire recalls and lawsuits and a much lower market share from the low ranking.
They finally started to see profit again in 2008. Note, I'm only talking about the automotive part of Ford - their vehicle credit company has been keeping the company afloat through those years.
So then, because of their new vision, they have much fewer cars in the market when the "financial crash" happened in late 2008 than their GM and Chrysler counterparts. They had much fewer cars to offload in the Cash for Clunkers program.
Also, because of their new vision, they have invested heavily on what people want nowadays - green cars and cars that you can "talk to" to change your music and the like. They are finally getting traction on their hybrids and are building cars in the low price-points that could compete with a Hyundai and keeping their high-end cars with high sticker-prices for those who want them.
Whatever William Ford, Jr is doing, it is working. He has successfully negotiated terms with UAW to keep their retirement costs manageable, he has been spot-on on predicting market patterns, and he has been wise in refusing to cede partial control to the US government.
Coming from almost a decade of losses to finally making $1B profit is no small achievement. But then, Ford has gone through worse before and still came out fighting.
If you think that cutting costs, plant closures, and union concessions is not the ticket to keeping your company afloat in this economy, then you must be a GM... and look where they are now.