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Nick Scheele's rise to the top has been anything but classic - unlike his cars. He talks to Dominic White
When Jaguar's chairman and chief executive, Nick Scheele, joined Ford's buying department as a graduate trainee in 1966, he could not have told you what a balance sheet was, let alone read one. "I had no idea of either the commercial reality or the technical world," he readily reveals. "I had no particular yen for cars - I didn't even have a driver's licence. To be honest, I didn't know what on earth I was doing."
With a degree in languages from Durham University, Scheele had a string of job offers but chose Ford because he was broke and it was the only employer that would let him start immediately, without a summer break. It's a decision that fits snugly with the impression he gives today, that of a self-made man. But his easy-going charm conceals a deepset appetite for hard graft.
Scheele's first trainee assignment happened to be in purchasing, buying brake tubing for the soon-to-be-launched Cortina. He fell into it straightaway. "From day one I loved the job," he says, "so I never moved on to other functions."
Unsurprisingly, Ford's approaches to buying in those days look rather primitive compared to those employed today in his department at Ford subsidiary Jaguar. "For the most part, it was three quotes, pick the lowest and then hammer the price down," recalls Essex-born Scheele. "But while it was very unsophisticated, it was also very involving."
Having had no formal training, he "didn't have a clue" when he approached his first negotiation. "All I knew was that the estimate said it should cost such and such, that the quote was a lot higher and that there was only one supplier. They could have taken me to the cleaners, but the guy took pity on me. Having realised I...