The party’s over as misfiring Ford puts fear into Motown
By Simon English in Detroit
When the 1970s soul veterans Earth, Wind and Fire were booked for a concert to open a five-day jamboree of cars, stars and fireworks to celebrate the 100th birthday of the Ford Motor Company, cynics claimed that it was the ideal booking.
Like this colossus of American industry, they said, the band had seen better days. And like the company, undergoing one of the shakiest spells in its history, the concert was overtaken by events; the performance was cancelled because of mud, wind and rain.
Ford dubbed its 100th anniversary, “The Road Is Ours”. But many among the estimated 100,000 from all over America who attended the centenary events had only one question: “For how much longer?”
The company is reeling under a stumbling economy and paying the price for a disastrous expansion plan that saw it lose £5 billion in the past two years.
Deaths caused by tyre problems and the lawsuits that followed contributed to a climate where the unthinkable - bankruptcy - is now, in the words of one car expert “far from a remote possibility”.
Such talk has caused fear in Motown, a city built on the motor industry. Terrie Worful, a Detroit resident all her life, said: “It is rough. Without cars, Michigan would close. There is nothing else here.”
None of her immediate family works for Ford, but all have suffered the effect of the hard times also endured at General Motors and Daimler Chrysler. Her brother worked at Chrysler for 20 years. Now he sells windows, sometimes.
“I blame the unions,” she said. “They just ask for more and more and it sends up living costs.”
Henry Ford founded the business in Dearborn, a town just outside Detroit, on June 16, 1903. His great-grandson, Bill, now runs the global icon.
The 46-year-old, who claims to “bleed Ford blue”, needs to repeat the rescue act performed by his grandfather after the Second World War, the first time the company teetered, saddled with debt.
If he succeeds, he’s a hero. If he fails, he’s the rich kid with the right name who should never have got the job.
Two years ago, Bill Ford seized control from one of the non-Fords periodically employed to run the family firm. Since then, he has cut 35,000 jobs and shut several factories. He admits that the hardest thing has been firing people, saying: “I dread it, I hate it, I lose sleep over it and my stomach gets into a knot over it.”
Although the protesters outside Ford HQ no doubt disagree, he says he has little choice but to wield the axe if the group is going to reach its second centenary. Mr Ford dismisses talk of bankruptcy, pointing to the amount of cash in the bank. But he admits he has been through the worst year in his life.
He is not, he says, having fun and, at the annual meeting today, faces shareholders who have seen their investment more than halve since he took charge.
Ford is more than just another car maker. It was the company that introduced the legendary black Model T, and revolutionised manufacturing with the invention of the moving assembly line.
There have been a few encouraging signs that it might pull out of the slump. Sales have recovered, costs have been cut and Wall Street has moved from deeply sceptical to merely agnostic.
For the company that put the world on wheels, though, these remain troubled times.
