Word: cars
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black," decreed an entrepreneur named Henry Ford in 1909. Nowadays shoppers browsing through a Ford showroom can choose models in everything from basic blue to racy red, but the founder's favorite color remains popular with the company's executives and shareholders. And with good reason: the profit-and- loss statements of Ford Motor Co. have lately come only in black...
Almost everything Ford produces these days seems to fly out of showrooms. The smoothly styled Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable midsize sedans and wagons (nearly 460,000 sold in the U.S. last year at prices starting at about $11,800) remain among the most popular cars on the road. The revamped Lincoln Continental ($26,600 and up) is in such demand that some customers must wait as long as five months for delivery. To appease impatient Continental buyers, Ford has started to send them $20 Cross pen-and-pencil sets along with an apologetic note; one customer returned the gift...
Most of Ford's success has come at the expense of the much larger GM, which has been slow to respond to changing consumer tastes. In 1984 GM owned a 46% share of the U.S. passenger-car market, compared with Ford's 19%. At last count, GM had dropped to 37%, while Ford had risen to capture 22% of the $130 billion-a-year domestic market. Chrysler is chugging along with 12% of U.S. sales, in contrast...
...momentum is a slowdown in the U.S. economy. At 5 1/2 years, the current expansion is unusually old, and many economists expect a recession to hit next year. Already, interest rates are on the rise, which could slow auto sales by making it harder for customers to afford car loans...
...car company is prepared to weather a downturn, Ford is. The bleak years of 1980 through 1982, when it lost $3.26 billion, taught the company how devastating a recession can be. Philip Caldwell, Ford's chairman at the time, was forced to cut costs drastically and boost productivity. When Petersen took over as chairman in 1985, he oversaw an equally relentless slashing of expenses...