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And once again we will wait for what seems like forever for a real photo of what it's going to look like.

Locked...going too political/off topic for its own good.

I think I mentioned at one time how bad Fords lease programs were on the rangers and lack of incentives...they FINALLY came out with subveened purchase rates....guess what...more floor traffic...go figure!

It took that long to retool MAP for Ranger ??‍♂️

I think what he was saying is the Mulally made the tough cuts that needed to be made but the Fields comment wasn't about headcount it was about management style. Fields allowed individuals and groups to do what they wanted to do or what was in their best interest and not the best interest of the company. That isn't something the board or Bill Ford would necessarily see. The only way to stop that is for the CEO to make mandates to his direct reports and ensure compensation is aligned with the right indicators. It doesn't matter what you say - what matters is what you reward or punish. In Mulally's first meeting his direct reports were hiding their financial results from each other and keeping huge notebooks of data compiled by a small army of support staff each week. He told them that next week they would share everything and they were only allowed to bring one sheet of paper to the meeting. More importantly - and I think Hackett is doing the same - he required business cases to be analyzed at the corporate level, not just on a vehicle by vehicle or department by department basis. You can't do something that saves your department $1M if it costs another part of the business $2M. That includes "doing your own thing" on vehicles and systems instead of working together as one entity.

I would rather leave the Probe name in the past and come up with something different. I don't know of anyone who has fond memories of the Probe.

Question I would have is how does this happen? Where was Bill Ford? Where was the Board? If the manpower reduction was so brutal, wasn't head count such a very visible stat such that it would always be on the radar screen once Mullay left? And if Fields was in fact reverting to the old ways, no one was "going up the back stairs" and cluing Bill Ford in?...Assuming he did not pay attention to head count/org charts? And these discussions on span of control? How long has the "flatter is better" trend been popular? For some time I would think. I think I have to go back to the library and read "Once Upon a Car" one more time.

Don't blame Mulally, The 33% reduction in white collar was BRUTAL ! It was Mark Fields who basically did NOTHING and allowed the fiefdoms to rebuild.

All is good! I picked up my new Edge on May 2. Finally! Got my Mag wheels put on, my windows tinted, and a good coat of wax on it. Now to drive and enjoy it.

I had lunch with a fellow retiree just yesterday. Many were NOT ready to retire even though the "writing was on the wall". A friend of the other retiree who was in mid-level engineering management was given the opportunity to do an early retirement last. When they declined, they were demoted and had ZERO people reporting to them ! If that is not a signal, I don't know what s !

They would sell tens here.

I know that looks are subjective, but for me, styling for the current crop of crossovers ultimately boil down to degrees of ugliness. Hideous on one end of the spectrum, tolerable on the other. Station wagons, on the other hand, can actually be aesthetically pleasing! A good example is Ford's current generation Mondeo wagon. While I'll acknowledge that not all styling elements of this wagon will be to everyone's liking, to me it looks much better than any crossover vehicle in Ford's global product portfolio:

I drive 15-20k miles a year, depending on where my project is for work. My wife's commute is 15 minutes, we switch cars often to try and balance them out. Leasing is not for me. I try to keep them for ten years. Our cars are staggered by five years, and I do five year loans so I always have one car paid off. I see no need to replace my cars as often as I replace my iPhone.