Word: forde
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...Malkin Athletic Center (MAC) Quad was filled with emergency vehicles, thick smoke and the smell of burning rubber Monday night when a passing Ford Bronco caught fire...
Fields comes with a reputation as a cost cutter and fix-it guy. Before taking over Mazda, he spent two years in Argentina restoring a troubled Ford operation to profitability. At Mazda, where he started as sales and marketing senior adviser, he found a remarkably inefficient bureaucracy. Shortly after arriving, he requested a report on Japan's domestic-car market. Three days later, a tome the size of the New York City phone book, and about as illuminating, appeared on his desk. "Its conclusions were severely lacking," Fields says. "Our investment bankers knew more about our business than some...
...from the veteran Wolfgang Reitzle, a former BMW honcho respected for his product-development and engineering acumen. Analysts say Jaguar would not be in the black without Reitzle's insistence that the automaker not skimp on such engineering details as the six-speed gearbox in the S-Type. Some Ford watchers, though, say Reitzle's departure was timely. "Wolfgang was great on the brand side, but he was always banging heads against people on the cost side of the business," says analyst Scott Hill of Sanford C. Bernstein...
Fields acknowledges that "I'm not an engineer," and says he expects to have "much more of a business influence than a product influence." Indeed, PAG's new design chief, Peter Horbury, will report not to Fields but to Ford's design guru J Mays. Fields is expected to jack up volume, which will mean pushing harder into the entry luxury market, as Jaguar is doing with its X-Type. And he will have to make more raids of the Ford parts bin. Ford has reportedly killed Jaguar's plan, championed by Reitzle, to develop a platform for its next...
...risk is that Ford could sully the cachet of its luxury vehicles. Says Prudential Securities analyst Michael Bruynesteyn: "If you leverage platforms and components, it has to be done in a way consumers don't notice." Already purists sniff that Jaguar's S-Type shares so many parts with the Lincoln LS and Ford Thunderbird that it is a Ford alley cat in a Jaguar's skin...