Word: forde
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...town that is better known for the flash and brassiness of its bosses, with cuff links the size of silver dollars and stogies the length of private yachts. Although few people outside the industry know their names, the three men who have ascended to power at GM, Ford and Chrysler within the past year have been working hard to accomplish what many said Detroit could never do: reinvent itself and profitably build cars that can stand bumper to bumper with the best the Europeans and Japanese have to offer. After two decades of spectacular management blunders that resulted...
When Alexander James Trotman was named chairman of the Ford Motor Co. in October, there was no flourish or fanfare, not even a prior announcement. He was handed the keys to one of the largest and most powerful corporate kingdoms on earth in a small, no-frills gathering at the company's plant in Dearborn, Michigan, almost as an afterthought to the introduction of Ford's new Mustang. At General Motors 11 months earlier, affable, unassuming Jack Smith landed just as unceremoniously in that company's top job. Following the virulent boardroom coup that ousted his predecessor, chairman Robert Stempel...
...revolution in engineering, manufacturing and management has been proceeding in fits and starts since the mid-1980s at all three companies. Now it is finally starting to work. The evidence is found in a new generation of products: cars like Chrysler's white-hot LH sedans and Ram pickups, Ford's Taurus, Explorer and Lincoln Mark VIII, GM's Cadillac STS, the new Chevy Camaro and the Honda- and Toyota-killer Saturn...
...Ford, for example, a company traditionally more comfortable with the patrician styles of Ford's own family princes, had never seen the likes of its new chairman. Trotman has forged his career by going against the patrician grain at every opportunity. As a product manager at British Ford in the late 1950s, he made his first mark by taking on the senior engineers to develop its Cortina, which became one of its most successful product introductions ever. Raised in Scotland, the son of a carpet layer and upholsterer and the only non-college graduate to hold the top position, Trotman...
...like mystery. I'd like to have everyone's cards on the table and get dissent and debate out of the way before we move. After that, we go, we don't look back. We all go for it, very straightforward and simple." After being formally named Ford's chairman and moving into the paneled corner suite on the 12th executive floor of the Dearborn headquarters building known as "the Glass House," Trotman turned to his secretary and asked his first question: "Is there a reason why I should ever have lunch in this building?" One of his first executive...