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HOW FORD 'FIXED' THE TAURUS
CAR Still, when author Mary Walton set out in early 1993 to chronicle the development of the 1996 Taurus, it would have been hard to predict that America's top-selling car was heading for a fall, with a redesign whose styling was too radical and price tag too steep. Back then, Ford Motor Co. had high hopes that the Taurus' first major overhaul would result in another triumph. So then-Chairman Harold A. ''Red'' Poling agreed to give Walton, a former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, a front-row seat in Ford's Design Center, amid the team of engineers, planners, designers, and marketers remaking The Car That Saved Ford. The resulting book, Car: A Drama of the American Workplace, is a no-holds-barred account of how Ford fell far short of its lofty goals--and it's a good read to boot. Walton also provides an enlightening peek at the inner workings of a large corporation trying to reinvent itself. The author was granted unprecedented access to the Taurus team, becoming a virtual insider at Ford for nearly three years. The company's only restriction was that Walton not publish proprietary details about costs and profits. Taurus program director Richard L. Landgraff gave Walton entree to team meetings and encouraged staffers to talk to her. Apparently, Walton's tale was a bit too frank for Ford. When Ford managers saw a completed manuscript of the book to vet it for proprietary data, the door slammed shut. (By then, it was already clear that Taurus sales were slumping.) Team members with whom Walton had chatted freely for years were instructed to refer her calls to the public-relations department. Ford, she writes, ''came to regret having allowed a journalist such a candid look at its operations. No writer had been given such access before, I was told, and it would likely be a long time before it happened again.'' It's not that Walton is unduly harsh. Indeed, she displays considerable sympathy for the ambitions and efforts of the engineers and managers whom she had come to know well. But she doesn't shy away from painful revelations, such as how America's No.2 auto maker came to so seriously misgauge its customers. In the most notable miscalculation, part way through the car's development, Landgraff and his team drove a brand-new Toyota Camry, a fine, redesigned car that competed directly with the Taurus. Then and there, they decided that the Taurus had to match the Camry's engineering refinement and features. Since Toyota had put more cost into its sedan, so would Ford. What Ford didn't realize was that Toyota had already reversed course, slicing costs of its future models. Walton's story follows the new Taurus from conception to assembly line to dealer lots, recounting many of the stumbles along the way. As in other books that have provided inside peeks at the birth of a new car, this account is replete with plucky engineers, visionary designers, the requisite close calls in winning approval for critical changes, and squabbles among team members. There are deft sketches of key characters, including team leader Landgraff, a blunt, antisocial man who tends to expect the worst of his fellow humans, and chief engineer George Bell, a caring manager who says he feels bad all day if he has to chew out a subordinate. But unlike most auto tomes, Walton doesn't leave the reader with theimpression that cars are actually built by the guys in wingtips. Her story encompasses the workers in Chicago and Atlanta who assemble the Taurus. Even more unusual, she reaches out to include supplier employees, chronicling a day in the life of Dora Ramirez Alarcon, a Mexican border resident who sews seat covers for a Ford supplier. The fly-on-the-wall approach also yields fascinating insights into Ford's struggles to adapt its militaristic command-and-control management style to the new era of team decision-making. The team wrestled for months with the question of where the Taurus' side-view mirror should be placed, then presented their recommendation to Ford's head of North American auto operations, Alexander J. Trotman, who is now chairman. The boss listened, then vetoed their choice. Walton's account of the Taurus' gestation will be comprehensible to readers who don't know a bushing from a gimp. Auto insiders may find her explanations unnecessary, but neophytes will appreciate the asides that, when needed, explain the different ways a door can be mounted on a car, for example. Walton does ramble at times, and lengthy sections describing skirmishing between Ford's PR staff and Detroit's auto scribes (including this reviewer, whose 1995 BUSINESS WEEK Cover Story on the new Taurus is cited) may be less compelling. Still, it's rare to find an auto book that explains the process of creating a car with so much color and detail. Car provides an unusual glimpse into how a big corporation filled with smart, capable, and well-intentioned people can fall so far short of its goals.
BY KATHLEEN KERWIN RELATED ITEMS
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Updated July 11, 1997 by bwwebmaster
Copyright 1997, Bloomberg L.P.
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