At Ford: Everything Old Is New Again
One of the things that Ford CEO Alan Mulally has done since taking on the challenge that is the Ford Motor Company is not to engineer some products that would get people into its dealerships or at least lead people to believe that some incredible sheet metal is on its way. Rather, he's plied his hand at making marketing decisions. One such decision is to take the anemic-selling Ford Five Hundred, Ford Freestyle (a design-damning name if there ever was one) and Mercury Montego and rebadging them Taurus, Taurus X, and Sable, respectively. Oh, yes, and they made "more than 500 improvements," like getting rid of a useless powertrain setup and replacing it with a more adequate one. We're not certain how many of the 500 that accommodates. Admittedly, they had to do something, but this prestidigitation isn't exactly going to have people who happen to wander into Ford dealers smacking themselves on the forehead and exclaiming: "Taurus! Damn, it's back! I haven't seen one of those since I had that rental car down in Orlando! Sure looks kinda different though. . . ."
What's that road paved with good intentions?
To be fair, Mulally hasn't had a whole lot of time to make substantive changes. But shouldn't one expect more than, well, that?
Now it seems that Mulally has decided that he's going to bring back the slogan "Have you driven a Ford lately?" While that certainly had charm in its day, one begins to wonder how a guy who helped engineer some aerospace marvels, some gems of contemporary aviation, is so fixated on things gone by. Isn't this a bit like saying, "Hmm. . .the Ford Trimotor had a fairly good run; maybe I ought to talk to my pals at Boeing about that"?
People within the so-called Glass House (a.k.a., Ford HQ) are probably worried that he's going to discover that Ford sold over 15 million Model Ts and that the color palette was rather limited. Imagine: "Back in Black: Return of the Car That Put America On Wheels."
