You guys should stand up and admit that you're working as a "spin" agency for Ford. That story you just released on Ford's losses and the Jaguar meltdown should have been titled "Premium Brand Group Reaping the Rewards of Mark Fields."
Look, everyone knows that Mark Fields charted the course and stood there and ran Jaguar and the Premium Brand group into the largest iceberg in the galaxy. You guys need to give him and his boss, Billy Boy, all the credit they deserve for how and where Ford is going to produce the greatest impact mess in North America. Do not forget to mention in passing that when Carlos approached Bill Ford at the Tokyo auto show about developing strategic relationships and also purchasing Jaguar and the Premium Brand group, Bill blew Carlos off?
Look at the shameful destruction of value to the stock. In only a few years the stock is now down to a little more than 15 percent of its market-high value. It would not surprise me to find out that, while the stock is fighting to hold the $6 level, the Ford Family and friends will take the company private. The total value of the stock is only about $11.5 billion.
But what bothers me most is that you guys are giving these clowns a free pass on the total level of accountability for this impending disaster. The best example of Ford's ability to get it right is to look at the track record of Mark Fields and the mess he made out of Jaguar and the premium brand group. If Jaguar is lucky they will sell a total of 26,000 units in the USA . Hell, they dumped the T-Bird and it sold around 30,000 units. These guys always have some lame excuse or try and divert the blame onto someone else like that damn consumer.
Every single program they have touched has created the mess that Ford is in today and the blame should be clearly placed on the senior management, board members, and the bean counters. But as long as the automotive community just sits silent, you are as much to blame as Mark Fields.
Laurance
Laurance, Laurance, Laurance! Did you wake up with a little Samuel L. Jackson on the brain? It's not nice to call people you don't personally know all those names, so we've excised them from your letter. Their personalities are not on trial-as you rightly point out, their business acumen is. When you demand TheCarConnection cover Ford's flailing turnaround plan, we think we've done a good job thus far - here, here, and here, for example.
Maybe the point in the Ford mess is that there are only one or two executives in the world capable of turning such a tragedy around-and they already have jobs. Or, even more possible, is that some problems can't be fixed without a total meltdown or Chapter 11 to trigger the nuclear option.
We sleep pretty well at night knowing we're not the cause of Ford's problems. When they let us have the veto on the Blackwoods of history and the green light to independent-rear-end Mustangs, then we'll take our share of the blame.
Our Malibu misleads
Please stop referring to the Chevy Impala/Buick Lucerne as full-size cars in your articles! This is incorrect!
Unfortunately GM has NOT manufactured a full-size sedan since the 1976 model year. Subsequent model years were "downsized" and the result is sales have also "downsized" to the point where GM is almost out of business! Sadly, the folks at GM do not realize that Americans prefer a large, rear-wheel-drive, beautifully styled vehicle, not the small, horrible front-wheel drive nightmares they cannot sell.
The Chevy Impala/Buick Lucerne are ugly, small, tiny little vehicles that should be correctly classified as "subcompact". The Buick Lucerne is only 203 inches long, the same exact length as the 1965 Buick Special. The Buick Special is a small car, but of course a MUCH BETTER vehicle than the horrible Lucerne. For further proof that the Lucerne is an incompetent little vehicle, read what Consumer Reports says about it in the August 2006 issue.
Bryan F. Carlson
Cicero, N.Y.
Bryan seems to believe in modern-day magazines but not the EPA, which classifies these cars as large, or the sales charts, which classifies the Impala as a sales success. We have an inkling Bryan does believe in the JFK-Cuba-CIA conspiracy and in garden gnomes, but that's just a hunch.
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I told you last time, this is the new Malibu. I've seen it. I was at the GM preview last year and that is the Malibu hands down. Also, common sense would dictate that the current Impala is only a year old, so why would a new one be arriving so soon?
AH-HA
You're right - and you can see our restated, amplified, and multiplied pictures of the Malibu on three pages, oldest to newest: here, here, and here . Also: we know who you are, and you can stop laughing now.
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