Aug 25, 04:43 am: Ford and environmental activists: a place where change can happen

Maybe. Maybe not. But Ford Motor Company needs to step off a cliff and make a big change. People are asking them to.

This Detriot News article, Ford faces reality has a couple of money quotes. This bit:


At www.fordboldmoves.com, Ford is giving voice to its severest critics, effectively acknowledging the validity of charges it once rebuffed and allowing executives to confirm harsh realities normally denied.

There’s Brad Brownell, Ford car group marketing manager, making the (successful) case to fast-track the Shelby GT-H:

‘As you know, dealer profitability is at an all-time low. The morale is low. This is something we can announce saying, ‘Hey, we’re listening to you guys. This is a partnership. You asked for it, we delivered.’ ’

There’s Robert Shanks, vice president and controller of Ford’s Americas unit and a close associate of Mark Fields, the Americas president charged with engineering Ford’s turnaround in North America:

‘We’re in trouble because we kind of sat still while others plowed ahead and stayed in touch with consumers and provided better quality products and provided products that the consumer believed had more value.’

Powerful admissions, those, that would make headlines in more normal times. That they’re presented on a slick corporate site, available almost anywhere in the world, suggests that Bill Ford’s overdue cultural revolution is gaining traction and, second, that Ford’s troubled sclerosis runs deeper than many realize.


Corporate site. Cultural revolution. Confirm harsh realities. That’s powerful stuff. That’s standing at the edge of the cliff.
And there’s this:

In a segment titled “The Future of Fuel, the Future of Ford”—effectively presaging the truck-and-SUV implosion driving the draconian cuts—representatives of two environmental groups critical of Ford frame its current predicament with an eerie exactitude.

‘Ford has the worst fuel efficiency of any automaker in America,’ says Jennifer Krill of the Rainforest Action Network. ‘We don’t want Ford to go out of business. We don’t want Ford to stop being a symbol of American innovation. Quite the contrary, we want Ford to be as strong an auto company in the 21st century as it was in the 20th century.

Adds Richard Kassel of the Natural Resources Defense Council: ‘Ford has a business model that relies on selling gas guzzlers at a time when people don’t want gas guzzlers. Ford is operating in a regulatory climate that rewards companies that don’t invest in environmental technologies. And of course Ford has a legacy of costs and other challenges to overcome, and all three of those take us where we are today.’


Change requires people you probably don’t like or, anyway, people you think are wrong, wrongheaded, going in the wrong direction.

They’ve walked to the edge of the cliff. Now, they’ve got to be willing to step off.

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Marnie Webb  |