Word: jaguar
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...hailed Fields as the next Carlos Ghosn--the executive who led Nissan's dramatic turnaround. Fields' bosses at Ford, which owns a controlling stake in Mazda, were so impressed that they handed him a bigger job: turbocharging Ford's troubled Premier Automotive Group (PAG), made up of Aston Martin, Jaguar, Land Rover and Volvo...
This month Fields is scheduled to start working out of the group's London headquarters. His mission: to increase PAG's net income ninefold, from an estimated $250 million to $2.3 billion by 2006. Achieving that goal will be no lay-up. With the exception of Jaguar--up 12%--PAG's sales were anemic last year compared with those of BMW, Lexus and Mercedes-Benz, which sizzled with hot offerings. PAG's sales are up so far this year, but its British vehicles still lag in quality: in the most recent "initial quality" survey by J.D. Power and Associates, Jaguar...
...Fields faces challenges that he never had at Mazda. He is taking over 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...
...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 generation of large sedans, and is instead considering one developed with Lincoln and Volvo...
...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...