Bryce Hoffman, a Detroit News auto industry reporter, offers a sympathetic perspective about how Ford navigated through the Great Recession.
Hoffman was given a great deal of access to company leaders and internal documents. In return, he says he promised Ford “nothing in return but fairness and accuracy” (p. ix). That may well be true, but don’t look here for what the Columbia Journalism Review (2014) calls “accountability journalism.” The Mulally regime is not critiqued in any meaningful way; quite the opposite. American Icon has the inspirational tone of a Touched By An Angel episode.
Sometimes Hoffman pushes his hagiography past what the facts can support. For example, he refers to the awkward and chunky 2010 Taurus as a “jaw-dropping new flagship that trumpeted Ford’s reemergence as a leader in automotive styling” (p. 334). Nor does he acknowledge that subsequent Taurus sales were so lackluster that they never even matched the peak years of its much-maligned predecessor, the Five Hundred (Wikipedia, 2014).
American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company
- Bryce G. Hoffman; 2012
- Crown Business, New York, NY
“As he was leaving, Mulally told Wagoner he would like to be able to call him in the future if he had more questions. He was just trying to be polite, but Wagoner took it as another sign of weakness. He would later claim publicly that Mulally had sought his help as he struggled to understand the industry in those early days. The truth was, Wagoner had been played so well he did not even notice.” (p. 130)
“Under Mulally, the status of engineers inside Ford improved dramatically. People in other departments listened to what they had to say, because Mulally had convinced everyone that better cars and trucks were the key to Ford’s revival. All employees at every level of the company now knew their most important job was supporting Ford’s global product renaissance.” (p. 194)
“In 2011, at least, there was no evidence of the complacency that inevitably followed earlier rebounds in Dearborn. Instead of resting on their laurels, Mulally and his team were still toiling to improve Ford’s balance sheet, raise its credit rating, redeem the Blue Oval, and restore dividends. The stalled recovery in the United States and the new economic problems abroad meant none of these things would come easy. And there were still bigger goals beyond those. Ford was now competing to stand beside companies like Toyota and Volkswagen at the forefront of the global automotive industry.” (p. 197)
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RE:SOURCES
- Columbia Journalism Review; 2014. “The right debate: Access vs. accountability is what matters.” Posted Jan. 2; accessed Oct. 12.
- Wikipedia; 2014: Ford (Five Hundred, Taurus). Accessed Oct. 12.
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