I Think I'm A Ford Fan

Or , after reading this story in the Wall Street Journal, at least a fan of Alan Mulally, the CEO. As a voyeur of the American auto industry crisis, it's hard not to notice how often GM and Chrysler seem to stumble and bumble in, out and around bankruptcy. And how Ford has managed to mostly do the right thing and make smarter choices than their Detroit neighbors. At first I thought it was because Mulally was an outsider but, then again, so is Ed Whiteacre ( former Chairman and CEO of AT&T) and so was Bob Nardelli (former CEO of The Home Depot) who was brought in by Cerebus Capital to run Chrysler after they acquired it. Sergio Marchionne is a certainly a Detroit outsider albeit not an automotive industry outsider as the CEO of Fiat.

So while outsiders now abound in Detroit and the American auto industry, what is it that makes
BusinessWeek story so interesting is how so not like a car guy Mulally comes off as. Which is probably why Ford continues to be a better story than the rest of the American auto industry (although I'm pulling hard for all of them and even starting to feel a bit optimistic about GM, too). Ed Whiteacre, in particular, seems like he could have had an entire career at GM and doesn't seem that different from Rick Wagoner and is only having more success because he doesn't own the baggage of too many years at the same company. I don't know if he's really doing much that's so different but he is just free to do it.

But the big difference, I think, is that because Ford didn't take bailout money, Ford can continue to run itself like a car company while the others have to run themselves as a government subsidiary. I don't think there's many people, if any, that think that having to include government bureaucracy with giant legacy corporate bureaucracy is going to do anyone any good, particularly the public. And that's the other difference between Ford and the other companies: Ford is still working for it's owners, chiefly shareholders. The other companies are working for the government; how inspiring.