/ 8 January 2007

Ford promises new page in history

Ford, which invented the modern auto industry, used the 100th annual Detroit motor show to promise on Sunday a new page in its long but troubled history.

Ford, which is eliminating 16 plants and 45 000 jobs, lost $7-billion in the first nine months of last year and is at risk of being overtaken by Japan’s Toyota as the second-best-selling auto brand in the United States.

But introducing an array of new production and concept vehicles, and a voice-activated communications system with Microsoft, company chairperson Bill Ford said this year would mark the group’s recovery.

He noted that at the first Detroit show in 1907, his great-grandfather Henry Ford revealed the plans for the Model T, the car that created mass production.

”As I look forward to 2007, I see the Ford Motor Company once again displaying our own resilience,” Bill Ford said at the glitzy product event, which featured blue laser lights and deafening rock music.

”We’ve had some challenging times lately, but my optimism for Ford Motor Company is unwavering; 2006 was a difficult year for us, and 2007 will be a pivotal one,” he said. ”I believe we’ve laid the foundation for a stronger Ford, beginning this year.”

Ford relinquished the chief executive’s job in September, turning to Boeing’s Alan Mulally to lead the recovery effort. He described his successor as a ”product guy through and through” who was ”attacking those elements that have held us back”.

Mulally was introduced at his first auto show by music from British glam-rock band T Rex, whose leader singer Marc Bolan was, ironically, killed in a car crash.

After giving a sales pitch for the latest version of Ford’s Five Hundred sedan, Mulally promised ”more striking designs” and said ”we are accelerating the pace of new product introductions around the world”.

”We have full support from every corner, including our employees, our unions, our supplier partners and our dealers, and our investors,” he stressed.

In September, the United Auto Workers said it had agreed a deal with Ford to offer redundancy or early retirement packages to all of the auto maker’s 75 000 blue-collar workers who want to get out.

Ford has also put its factories, intellectual property and trademarks up as collateral to secure $17-billion in loans.

As part of the overhaul, Ford is selling the prestigious British sports-car maker Aston Martin, and there are question marks over the future of the group’s other ”premier” brands — Jaguar, Land Rover and Volvo.

Mulally, however, said Ford is committed to ”growing” the premier and Mazda branches of its worldwide empire. He also promised more small cars, more crossover models and ”more capable” trucks.

Ford has been hit hard by a slump in sales of its most profitable pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles as Americans, at a time of high fuel prices, rediscover the benefits of smaller vehicles.

In 2006, Ford suffered an 8% drop in annual sales to 2,9-million vehicles. In December alone, the second-biggest US auto maker after General Motors saw its year-on-year sales plummet 13% to 233 621 units.

Among its new vehicles unveiled in Detroit, Ford rolled out a striking ”Airstream” concept inspired by the iconic, silver motor homes made by the Airstream company.

Featuring a hydrogen-powered hybrid engine, Ford said the car harks back to the future envisaged in Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey, complete with a lava lamp to illuminate the space-age interior. — Sapa-AFP