Ford

[bendmz]

How in God's green earth does the Ford Motor Company fucking lose 12 BILLION dollars????????? :pctoss

[01Snake]

How in God's green earth does the Ford Motor Company fucking lose 12 BILLION dollars????????? :pctoss

UAW

[CubanMustGo]

It's called "restructuring." You write off all the expenses associated with layoffs, "early retirements," and plant closures in one quarter even though you're going to do it over a period of a couple of years.

But yah, those are still scary numbers.

[Shelly]

Maybe Ford really ISN'T the best in Texas...

[SequSpur]

Meanwhile Gillespie is still Bulk raping... I mean bulk selling to customers. :D

[tsb2000]

Selling crappy cars for the longest time hasn't helped them much, either....

[T Park]

unions and bad management are a bitch.

[Nbadan]

Bad management. How is it that even Chevy can offer a 5/100,000 but Ford can't? Ford should have long ago associated itself with Hyundai or Mitibuishi motors or further explored its association with Mazda motors. It's not the workers fault if they are putting out inferior products. That's on management.

[ObiwanGinobili]

toyota hasn't had a lay off since 1953

[MannyIsGod]

I've owned 2 Fords.

Both engines blew up.

Does that answer your question?

[Jekka]

There are a lot of better cars out there than Fords. My Honda has 94k miles on it, and the only issue it's ever had was needing the catalytic converter replaced around 30k. Bad management may be one of the issues, but I think a big part of it is that their cars just aren't as good as many others.

[ZStomp]

I've owned 2 Fords.

Both engines blew up.

Does that answer your question?

I've owned two also.

I have never had major trouble. Just normal wear and tear.

[Extra Stout]

Ford had incompetent management under Jac Nasser. He set the company on a course that assumed that truck-based SUV's eventually would replace most passenger cars. He regarded quality as an afterthought.

Ford has made a string of poor management decisions regarding products. They let their best-selling Taurus wither on the vine, then threw away their brand equity for no more reason than somebody thought it would be cool if all their car names started with 'F'.

Their European subsidiary has a wonderful updated version of the Ford Focus. Ford US management didn't want to pay to homologize that car to the U.S. market. Instead they warmed over the existing, eight-year-old platform here. That update ended up costing a lot more, and yielded an inferior product.

A few years back, Ford had a concept for a large, rear-wheel-drive sedan called the 427. They decided not to produce it, going instead for the bland, flaccid, underpowered Five Hundred. Chrysler produced a vehicle similar in design and concept to the 427, called the 300, which has been an enormous hit.

Back in the 1990's, Ford decided to farm out its parts engineering to its suppliers. However, they failed to follow up and ensure that their suppliers had adequate engineering resources to do the job. Their quality collapsed. So they reversed course in the mid'90s and hired engineers. However, they hired the same bad engineers who were doing a bad job with their suppliers, because all the good engineers had gone to work for Toyota and Honda. So, next they started using foreign suppliers in this decade. Most of the foreign suppliers pointed out that Ford did really stupid things like failing to use interchangeable parts. For example, Honda might have one wiring harness that can be used in eight different vehicles, whereas Ford would have eight different ones. The foreign suppliers offered to help streamline these needless inefficiencies. Ford said no.

Another hit product, the Ford Escape, has been allowed to wither on the vine like the Taurus. In 2001, it was the class leader. In 2008, it is an anachronism.

The Mercury and Lincoln divisions have been all but left to die with no original product of their own. Mercurys are rebadged Fords with waterfall grilles. The only thing they have going for them is Jill Wagner.

While Cadillac has revolutionized its lineup, Lincoln sells a rebadged Ford Fusion and Ford Expedition with lots of chrome.

Then there are the quality issues. There is a chance they've turned the corner here. Since they knew they were going to be building the Ford Fusion in Mexico, and figured Mexicans were dumb and lazy, they engineered the Fusion to be as simple as possible to build within tolerances. It is now one of the most reliable cars sold in America.

You can decide for yourself how much of that is DUUUUUH engineering, and how much of that is a result of building cars thousands of miles away from any UAW worker.

UAW workers deserve a lot of flak for their performance, but it seems to be that the majority of Ford's problems come from bad design, inefficient business practices, and stupid management decisions.