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Alan Mulally
Can you rival industry leaders in dealership margins? Is that the goal?
Absolutely. Profitable growth for all.
Fourteen months after leaving Boeing for the top job at Ford Motor Co., Alan Mulally still has a lot of work to do.
He has arranged a loan package worth $23.4 billion, put Jaguar and Land Rover up for sale and Volvo up for review, and last month snatched marketing star Jim Parley from Toyota. But U.S. sales continue to fall, and Ford Motor expects more financial losses this year and in 2008.
Getting back on customer consideration lists remains Ford's biggest challenge, the CEO says. Mulally, 62, spoke with Editorial Director Peter Brown and Staff Reporter Amy Wilson.
How would you assess where Ford is today compared with when you stepped in here?
We together are ahead of where I thought we'd be. The good thing is that the Ford team had recognized the situation and had put plans in place to deal with that reality. I helped accelerate many of those plans.
The things we came together on were to aggressively restructure to operate at the current demand and (with the market's) changing model mix and get back to profitability. And then accelerate the development of the new cars and trucks. And then the third part was the financing of the whole plan. We went to the markets at the right time with a solid plan. They responded really well. Our liquidity is good. The thing I'm really pleased about is under the guise of working together- our dealers, Ford, the UAW, our suppliers, the bankers, investors, everybody pulling together around this plan. With respect to that, I think we're a year or more ahead of where I thought we'd be. It's a huge cultural change. And this is a big transformation.
Is your product pipeline where you want to see it? You always want it to be faster, but is the future looking satisfactory?
I'm really encouraged with not only the pace and the discipline of the cycle plan but also the productivity with which we're doing it. (Product chief) Derrick (Kuzak) and the team are using our global resources. We'll...