Mark Fields' Death by a Thousand Cuts
Now that Ford has hocked everything but Mark Fields' mullet, el Presidente de las Americas says they could step up cost cutting efforts to meet their financial goals in '08 and '09. The Wall Street Journal quotes the Blue Oval's Master of the Obvious as he explained, "there's more risk than there is opportunity going forward" and "if we see weakness on the revenue side, we have to take up the slack on the cost side." Never one to waste a convenient excuse, Fields echoed GM's mantra that their decline in monthly sales was due to cutbacks in fleet sales. Fields' comments came at the launch of the "all new" Focus which features a redesigned exterior and interior on top of the same old eight-year-old chassis. It seems that some of their cost-cutting efforts are aimed at the wrong target…
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RobertSD: The “eight-year-old” platform is still newer, technically speaking, than many Toyota platforms that are simply re-engineered every 5 or so years.
It's still an eight-year-old platform, no matter who builds it. From Edmunds Inside Line:
"Underneath this new body is a slightly retuned version of the existing Focus platform, the same basic goods as was introduced eight years ago." [Emphasis added] Re-engineering a platform "every 5 or so years" sure beats recycling a "slightly retuned" eight-year-old platform.
Dude's got to chop that mullet... Seriously, he looks like Scott Baio.
OK - so they did a facelift. How did it end up costing more than just using the European one ?
How old is the current Corolla? (I'm afraid we're as likely to see Fields change his hair as Trump.)