DOES IT MATTER THAT FORD MOTOR COMPANY'S NEW CEO ISN'T A "CAR GUY?"

There is more than a little debate in cyberspace about whether new Ford Motor Company (R) CEO Alan Mulally is a "car guy."

First, we'd better define terms. Operationally, a "car guy" is someone who, in the words of Barry Meguiar is "certifiably car crazy." In other words, to a "car guy," motor cars are not just some sort of "widget" or unit or "inventory" for production and sale. To a "car guy," automobiles are functional, mechanical works of art and science. They are vital, dynamic and exciting expressions of human creativity. To a "car guy," even the most prosaic form of automobility represents something greater than a mere appliance of personal transportation. A true "car guy" would be involved, if not consumed, by cars, even if it wasn't a paying vocation.

Moreover, a true "car guy" holds the broad perspective of the grand sweep of automotive history. A car guy is cognizant of how the state-of-the-art is developing, not in the abstract, but in how real people have and will experience motoring in their diverse lives. Thus, a true "car guy" can appreciate--in context-- the timeless, elemental simplicity of a Ford Model T or the oddly grotesque brutality of Henry Ford's 999 racer, as well as the hypertechnical zeniths of a modern Formula One car or Audi's world-beating R10. A true "car guy" can be absorbed by the "classics" at a world-class Concours 'd Elegance as well as being gripped by the human-mechanical drama of a Saturday-night short-track race or the surreal promotional hucksterism of an international auto show.

A true "car guy" is experiential in nature. A true "car guy" would rather delve into mechanical bowels of some odd, nearly extinct footnote to automotive history rather than attend all the high-brow society cocktail parties in the world. A true "car guy" would rather stand on the moist, blistering salt plains of Bonneville during Speed Weeks, watching for the fleeting glimpse of another unknown privateer making a class record run than watch Tiger Woods at Augusta National. A true "car guy's" calendar is punctuated by the universal holidays of automobility: Indianapolis, Monaco, Daytona, Sebring, Goodwood, Pebble Beach, the Woodward Dream Cruise, Meadowbrook, the Detroit International Auto show, and many, many other quasi-spriritual experiences of automobility. A true "car guy" revels in the lore, collected wisdom, history and anecdotes of motoring's past and present. He has a sufficient frame of experiential reference to integrate new experiences and organize them into their proper contexts.

A true "car guy" seeks out the great adventures of motoring: The Autobahn, the Pacific Coast highway, Old Route 66 and thousands of other "good" roads across the globe that beckon. Road trips are not marked by time or even destination, but rather by time spent imbibing the essence and inherent freedom of automobility. The sights, sounds and sensations of taming a responsive machine over a challenging bit of tarmac rivals the height of human adventure. Denise McCluggage--a brilliant "car guy" in her own right--once wrote about the essence of motoring as connectedness and the "centering" of one's physical core in complete synchronicity with the machine and the road.

A true "car guy" feels the aesthetic beauty of design. The simple contour of a fender or the perfectly-weighted resistance of a properly designed switch triggers the sort of informed enjoyment that others receive from a great poem or celebrated prose. The efficient rhythms of a complex valve gear or even the steady beat of an assembly line resonates in the true "car guy" as much as the rhythms of nature speak to the naturalist. The tuned sound of a sports car engine or the hushed, isolated tones of a fine luxury touring car are simply symphonic to the true "car guy's" ears. The aroma of fresh upholstery, the gleam of polished aluminum, the glint of carefully creased, formed and finished steel, the glassy smoothness of varnished wood inserts, the woven texture of carbon fiber, and the pebble grain of cast iron all enchant a true "car guy's" senses.

The intellectual theme that knits together these disparate experiences for the true "car guy" is the deep well-spring of intellectual, aesthetic and visceral attraction to the machines, the technology of them, and the people who make, use, modify, restore and conserve them.

But to be a "car guy" in a position of power at an automobile concern, one cannot be simply an enthusiast, a dilettante, or a frustrated Walter Mitty, opining ad nausium from his soapbox.

A "car guy" with power must channel the sum of his specialized knowledge and wisdom into forms which create maximum sustainable value for his customers, while advancing his chosen art. He can no more be a perfectionistic, technological snob any more than he can be a hidebound technological Luddite. He must be internally driven to "democratize" and downsize new technologies and make them practical, if not wholly transparent to the masses who have varying levels of interest in and commitment to automobility and the interworkings of it. He cannot be so enthralled by technical complexity that he misses the beauty of simplicity. He must hold sacred the trust placed in him by all the stakeholders--customers, dealers, technicians, designers and all the rest--to produce the best possible motor car at the best possible price which meets the needs of the targeted market. He must be parsimonious with those things that detract from the motoring experience and be generous with those things that elevate it--all within the constraints of constructing a sustainable market. He must be sensitive and creative in finding new niches and new markets. Yet he can never slip into the commodity mentality which views products, market segments or the people involved in them as disposable. He must strive to create milestone products within the crushing constraints of budgets, regulations and time. He can never sit still or be satisfied with what's been done.

Now for the application of our definition.

Richard Jensen, staff blogger at www.blueovalnews.com, apparently disagrees with the criticism of Alan Mulally as "not a car guy" See "Cabin Assignments on the Titanic" at http://blueovalblogs.com/blogs/?p=61

Jensen argues, "Well, the verdict is in on Alan Mulally. He’s officially not a ‘car guy’."

Sarcastically, Jensen belittles the concerns of the commentators on Mulally's lack of demonstrated "car guy chops:"

"Still, you get the sense that among the chattering classes, at least some of them, there would be a different take if it was discovered that Mulally had rebuilt a GT 350 in his spare time, or a Jag E-Type, or even (gad) a 396 Chevelle."

"Then you’d have something. This, ladies and gentlemen, would be a car guy!
We wouldn’t feel so uncomfortable about him taking the reins of Ford Motor, we wouldn’t wonder about his ‘chops’. . . . "

"Man, Alan Mulally is such a non-car guy it’s not even funny.

Why, the guy even wants to be a car guy.

And nothing keeps you from being a car guy, quite like wanting to be a car guy. You think Carroll Shelby ever asked to be a car guy?"

Jensen, for all his cleverness, misses the crux of the concern. The open question is whether Mulally will have sufficient experience and sensitivity on a broad enough basis to ask the right questions, demand the right answers, find the salient truth, and knowingly evaluate results.

These aren't skills one can develop without direct experience.

They aren't on the curriculum at MIT or the University of Kansas or any other business school.

And they aren't universal skills possessed by all engineers. What's more, the personal drive to be a "car guy"--while it can be triggered and nurtured by experience at any point in life, is probably not the sort of thing that can be instantly injected in sufficient quantities to make one a wise, competent oracle for directing a huge enterprise such as FoMoCo.

Jensen then proffers a neo-Manichean view of the automaking world:

"For those of you that aren’t ‘up’ on things, car companies contain two kinds of people (well, aside from the secretaries), ‘bean counters’ and ‘car guys’.

Bean counters are bad, and car guys are good.

You need to understand that to get anywhere in Detroit."

Jensen is correct to the extent that Detroit automakers are populated by those who believe cars are widgets to be whacked out at the greatest possible speed and the lowest possible cost per unit and those who take the responsibility entrusted to them as automakers a bit more personally and seriously. Of course, automakers are populated with a wide continuum of people: non-car guys, psuedo-car guys, emerging car guys, parochial car guys, fake car guys, dreamers, megalomaniacs, and even the rare "true car guy." Ninety-nine percent of these folks will never have the opportunity--nor should they--to operate an auto manufacturer. But to elevate a widget-maker, or even a myopic engineering generalist, to oversee the whole works is a formula for disaster.

Jensen reasons that: "The customer is king, and Alan Mulally is Ford’s first ever customer CEO. He’s the first CEO at Ford that hasn’t spent the last 20 years at least driving Ford cars that were generally provided as part of his pay.
Sure, Ford’s executive VPs know that other car companies exist, and they may have even, on rare occasions, driven their products or perhaps ridden in them."

Jensen is correct that far too many Detroit managers are wholly out of touch with the real world--such anecdotes as the senior managers who drive only motor pool vehicles stored in heated garages and never actually buying a vehicle feed into this perception. But the simple fact that Mulally's only known automotive history is as an infrequent purchaser of "soulless" Japanese luxury cars demonstrates nothing about his ability to see the broad spectrum of the market or to distinguish between the temporary fads and the long-term trends, or to even properly evaluate the real-world performance and functionality of types of vehicles he's never considered or experienced before.

The answer isn't in just hiring a successful outsider who knows something about engineering and business management, as well as how to buy his own new car. The answer is, in part, in identifying and championing those rare individuals who truly "get it." The leader of an automaker must have a discriminating eye, an informed touch behind the wheel and a gutsy mind attuned to the complex "sausage making" that is the modern new car business. Nothing known so far about Mulally suggests he's developed the kinds of relevant experience to accurately master the intangibles possessed by a "car guy" in charge. Thus, it's uncertain whether Mulally's "way forward" will crash on the shoals mediocrity or the become beached from misperception of the necessary products, niches and competitive market expectations.

Jensen then blasts the conventional wisdom of learning from ones forebearers:

"Alan Mulally has never stood in the shadows of Henry Ford, W.P. Chrysler, Alfred Sloan, Harl[e]y Earl, Billy Mitchell, Ernie Breech, the ‘Whiz Kids’, Hank the Deuce, Bob Gregorie, Lee Iacocca, Zora Arkus-Duntov, or even Virgil Exner."

Certainly, while this means he may have a fresh perspective, it also means that he may be unaware of the mistakes and successes of these men, or of their values or their decision making processes. As the cliche' goes, he who is not aware of history is doomed to repeat it.

Jensen correctly observes that "Nobody ever told him it was disloyal to buy a Toyota. He hasn’t grown up in an environment that has up ’till recently held that small fixes were all that was required, that the imports are a momentary aberration, that the whole world hasn’t changed outside Dearborn and Auburn Hills."

But Mulally's lack of Motor City myopia doesn't translate into the sort of balanced, knowledegable objectivity necessary to envision where each niche, market and submarket served by FoMoCo ought to be going. It doesn't suggest Mulally has the knowledge or the skill to develop world-class automobiles. Nor is an outsider's perspective sufficient to help Mulally locate those in FoMoCo he ought to listen to and those who he ought to disregard.

The advantage of our hypothetical "true car guy" is that he's got sufficient prior experiences relevant to automobiles that he can integrate objective and subjective data and know when he's being "sold a bill of goods." That is the essential test of education in any discipline. And it's the critical skill that cannot be shortcut, faked or avoided in a top manager.

Jensen concludes by arguing "Sticking to antiquated ways of approaching the business, where products are made to fill plants (bean counters) or because they’re cool (car guys), will only push Ford, and Detroit closer to the brink. Without turning this company’s focus outward, there will be no long-term revival of Ford Motor Company."

The problem with this oversimplified analysis is that a "true car guy in charge" is all about giving as many people as possible that "a ha" moment of satisfaction in motoring. He recognizes that in systems as complex as an automobile, that there are literally hundreds of compromises which can aggregate to create a mishmash and a miss. Thus, he uses objective and subjective benchmarks to stretch the limits and to cotinuously improve products. He looks at the long term effects of decisions, including how certain features will affect the brand in discrete, insular subcultures, in the various "car guy" niches and even ten or fifteen years down the road-- when some "newbee" is receiving his first taste of the brand through an old hand-me-down. He's also aware of the place that product and production decisions will have the history of automobility, always seeking to create new milestones and vehicles with timeless, enduring value. But he's also fully aware of the limits of the market and the technology, even as he strives to lead the industry forward.

Building a wide variety of vehicles for a diverse, competitive marketplace isn't a job for the faint-hearted. It's also not a forgiving job. It doesn't cotton to "do overs" or on-the-job training. It requires a brilliant engineer/technician/artist/designer/business person who never loses sight of the essential details nor the big picture.

While it's encouraging that Mulally has studied statistical quality systems and team approaches to problem solving, merely being a successful manufacturing guru from a highly technical, but materially different discipline may not be enough to lead Ford out of its decades of decline. Nor would it be a guarantee if Mulally was a "car guy." But perhaps the Way Forward wouldn't be so uncertain and fraught with peril if he were.