At Maserati quality comes first, then meeting/exceeding customer expectations, then profitability follows. At Ford there seems to be a rush to try to quickly fix all three simultaneously and reboot the company when goals aren't met.
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Bill is interviewing Italians right now... because they are doing so well.
It’s too late. But because the Ford family will be humiliated by bankruptcy it will be pushed back as long as possible. They don’t have a clue how to fix what they’ve broken.
My Maserati does one eighty five
Everyone but Ford is doing well. FMC is going, not surprisingly, down. As a company, we could maybe survive with a CEO like Mark Fields, but the damage done by Professor Moonbeam and CarCar is huge. We lost talent, by attrition, layoffs and retirements. We became even more bloated with deadwood, and the "real" workforce is not motivated at all.
I am not even sure the company can recover, even if we get rid of the Ford family. Let me give you some numbers to prove my point:
- FMC is boosting the EV spending to $50 billions. FYI, Ford's market cap is $50.23 billion.
- The company was valued at around $125 Billions in 2022. In December of 2022, the debt of the company was $138.4 Billions.
- Yes, the company has $32.2 Billions of cash reserves. However, its annual spending in 2022 was $151 Billions.
Am I the only one that sees here a sinking ship?
Now, the saving grace for the company, the F-150 line up, is dealing with recall after recall, dealers mark ups, high interest rates loans (did I mention that loan rejection increased 9.1%), and a looming recession. We lose money in EVs, and many of our vehicles are not selling well (some of them are in the "do not buy" list of Consumer Reports). A perfect recipe for disaster.
Maybe, and that's a big maybe, if Bill Ford goes away, Fartley goes away, and we get another Mullaly as CEO, we could keep the truck dominance in the NA market and with time, effort and prayers the company can turn around. The question is then... does anybody believe, I mean truly believe, the scenario I just described will happen?