How Ford got back on the fast track to success

PARIS — September, when this glamorous European capital is buzzing, is an exciting time to be in the City of Lights. For Ford CEO Alan Mulally, it was an especially good year.

In a city where U.S. products are often treated with disdain, Ford was the toast of the annual Paris Auto Show. As the man in the driver's seat, Mulally was greeted as a rock star for engineering one of the biggest turnarounds in the auto industry’s history.
"Today Ford is in a different place,” he told a group of press and Ford executives at the Parte de Versailles exhibition hall. “(We’ve) returned to profitability faster than we had forecast."
That road to profitably has been extremely bumpy for Mulally and the iconic American company. When he took the wheel in 2006, Ford was veering badly off track - losing a staggering $17 billion that year alone. Its U.S. operations were bleeding cash. The company was struggling to absorb a string of acquisitions that included Aston Martin, Jaguar, Land Rover, Mazda and Volvo.

“Most importantly, we didn't have a full family of vehicles in the United States,” Mulally told CNBC. “And each of our vehicles were not best in class. So, with that kind of background, we were losing market share and we were losing money.”

It was a stunning fall for a company that just a few years earlier had been raking in the cash. But Ford’s winning streak in the go-go '90s gave way to a bleak new decade of recalls, recessions and high gas prices. Ford's bread-and-butter trucks and SUVs stopped flying off the lots, and its lineup of cars — including the once hot-selling Taurus — had gotten old and stale.
"We strayed from what got us to the top of the mountain, and it cost us greatly,” said Bill Ford Jr., great-grandson of company founder Henry Ford, and the man then running the company.

In 2006, he made a painful self-assessment. He decided to ask the company’s board of directors for help.
“At the time, I was chairman, I was CEO, I was COO and I was president,” he said. “I was wearing all the hats. And they said, ‘Well, what do you need? Are you looking for a CEO or COO?’ I said, ‘I really don't much care. What I want is the right person.’"