American Icon by Bryce G. Hoffman Read Free Book Online Page A

polite company, a man Warren Buffett had called one of the best managers in the business. Reichardt was comfortably ensconced on a sprawling ranch in California and planned to retire from the board in six months, but he agreed to come to Michigan and serve as Ford’s vice chairman. He would get the company’s finances in order, fix Ford Credit, and try to teach young Bill how to run the company.
    Assembling the rest of the team proved a challenge—and an urgent one, considering that many of Nasser’s top executives had followed him out the door, either on their own or with Bill’s boot close behind. What was left of Ford’s bench was pretty weak. There was still plenty of talent inside the company, but much of it was buriedbeneath a thick layer of executives who were more adept at advancing their own careers than running a car company. They tended to view their high positions as rewards for long service and worried more about enjoying their perks than about the problems facing Ford.
    Bill Ford did the best he could. He found an able enough president and chief operating officer in Sir Nick Scheele, a likable Brit who had managed to do what many thought was impossible—make Jaguar profitable, at least for a while. Queen Elizabeth II knighted him for his effort to save the beloved British brand. As head of Ford of Europe, Scheele commenced a promising restructuring and put together a product team that was actually creating some world-class cars. His work on the other side of the Atlantic was far from complete, but none of it would matter if Ford’s North American business continued to decline. Ford put an unlikable Brit, David Thursfield, in charge of the company’s international operations. The iron-fisted cigar chomper was known for his cutting comments, but he also knew how to cut costs. Ford gave North America to Jim Padilla, an amiable Detroit native who was obsessed with quality. Padilla had a mind for manufacturing but quickly found himself out of his depth when he strayed too far into other aspects of the business.
    It was not the strongest team, and Ford knew it. Thursfield and Padilla were soon locked in mortal combat, each convinced that the other was elbowing in on his turf. When one walked into a room, the other left. Soon, lower-level executives were choosing sides and conspiring to undermine the other’s efforts. European cars were tweaked so that they could not meet U.S. safety requirements without expensive engineering changes, and cutting-edge technology developed in America was kept from the team in Europe. Scheele at least remained a trustworthy adviser and could be extremely effective when he was focused. Unfortunately, that was not always the case.
    Ford got more help a few months later, in May 2002, when Allan Gilmour agreed to come out of retirement and replace Nasser’s chief financial officer. Gilmour had already put in thirty-four years at the company, and Bill had worked for him before he retired as vice chairman in 1995. Convincing Gilmour to come back was not easy. After his retirement, he had come out of the closet—a move that provedparticularly shocking in an industry that still considered machismo a job qualification. But Gilmour hoped to help his former protégé figure out how to run the company. The board hoped that he, along with Reichardt, would teach Bill how to do it on his own. Both men admired Ford’s vision. They wanted to help him realize it. When big decisions were required, they walked him through the various options but tried to leave the final choice to him. But Bill Ford preferred to defer to their experience.
    When Ford did make decisions, he had a tough time getting his subordinates to implement them. They would agree with whatever he suggested, then do whatever they wanted. If Ford pressed them, they offered complicated excuses that he lacked the data to refute. But he rarely challenged them. Ford preferred to avoid confrontation. He had promised the board that he