Ford v Ferrari

Any reader of this blog understands my fascination, bordering obsession, with the Ford Motor Company.  It was impossible growing up in Detroit, as I did, without feeling the dominance of the auto industry.  Families tended to be Ford or GM oriented depending on the number of family members that worked at those companies.  Watching the Ford v Ferrari (2019) film several times in the past month has, of course, motivated me to write about the company once more.  I am sure it will not be the last time either.

My maternal grandfather worked for Ford and my mother was always enamored with Ford.  He was a factory worker in the foundry.  My mother was so proud when I got my first full time job at Ford.  I too was enamored since I had gone to school at the University of Michigan – Dearborn which was built on Henry Ford’s Fairlane Estate.  It was hard to be in Dearborn and not feel the impact and attraction of the Ford Motor Company.  The company headquarters, The Glass House, is the tallest building, I believe, in Dearborn.  The Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village also adds to that mystic.  My sister Ani also worked at Ford.  The family of my mother’s brother, Azad, was in contrast a General Motors family.  My uncle and my cousins Sandy and Ralph worked at the Cadillac assembly plant in Detroit.

When I started at Ford, I had the same feeling as everyone that worked there.  I would work there my entire career.  I would retire and then collect a most generous pension (something like 60% of the last few years average salary and lifetime health insurance).  Basically, people believed and valued the notion that if you dedicated your working life to Ford, Ford would take care of you all your life.  It was a wonderful deal but that pension system was truly a post-war economic bubble that began to collapse in the 1970s and 80s.  These days, with the pension non-existent for current employees and a stock that has been flat and subpar in the 2000s, a 401K based retirement is a poor substitute for wonderful pension and stock performance that was available when I was working there.

Ford v Ferrari is about how Ford tried to buy a financially distraught Ferrari in the early 1960s.  Ford believed the deal was in the bag, but lost out as Ferrari and Fiat forged a deal behind the scenes.  Enzo Ferrari, per the film, insulted Ford cars and the grandson of the founder, Henry Ford II, who was then running the company.  The Deuce, as Henry Ford II was affectionately known, vowed to get revenge by beating Ferrari in Formula One on the track, specifically LeMans, where Ferrari had ruled for a several years.  To do this, Ford teamed up with Carroll Shelby the legendary racer and race car builder.  Shelby enlisted driver and designer/ace mechanic Ken Miles to help achieve Ford’s goals.  The movie shows how they accomplished this while navigating the Ford corporate culture of that era.

The Ford v Ferrari movie highlighted Ford leaders in the 1960s that I have only read about:  Henry Ford II and Lee Iacocca.  I have no idea what The Deuce was really like, but the bold and brash portrayal by Tracey Letts seemed very credible to me.  He took over the company at the age of 28 and modernized and saved the company from the bizarre and out of date way it was run by his grandfather.  By the time he retired in 1979, the company was ready to embrace the sound leadership of Philip Caldwell and Don Petersen that was capped by the famed Ford Taurus.  The film made Iacocca into a more timid character than I would have imagined, but perhaps in those times before he ascended to the presidency, he was more reserved.

The third executive was Ford Executive Vice-President, Leo Beebe.  Beebe was the antagonist to the protagonists, Carroll Shelby and Ken Myles, in the film.  Played by Josh Lucas, Beebe came off as the ultimate conniving corporate suck-up in the film.  Hollywood needs antagonists in such films and they chose Beebe for that role.   A November 14, 2019 article in the Philadelphia Inquirer paints a more favorable picture of Beebe.  This character in the film exemplified everything I thought was wrong with Ford when I worked there from 1976 to 1983. 

Witness this exchange: 

Ford:  Give me one reason I don’t fire everyone associated with this abomination, starting with you?

Shelby:  Well sir, I was thinking about that very question as I sit out there in your lovely waiting room.  As I was sittin’ there, I watched that little red folder, right there, go through four pairs of hands before it got to you.  Of course, that doesn’t include the twenty-two or so other Ford employees that probably poked at it before it made its way up to the 19^th floor. With all due respect sir, you can’t win a race by committee.  You need one man in charge.

And a few moments later:

Ford:  See that little building down there?  In World War II, three out of five US bomber rolled off that line.  You think Roosevelt beat Hitler?  Think again.  This isn’t the first time Ford Motor has gone to war in Europe.  We know how to do more than push paper.

Ford pushed a lot of paper when I was there.  They had too many layers of management and the people that got ahead were mostly interested in their own careers and not making the best cars they possibly could.  They didn't have to make the best cars because there was no competition.  They sold everything they made.  The Leo Beebe character in the movie represented all of that.  Carroll Shelby summed it up brilliantly in talking about “that little red folder” and the no doubt circuitous route it took to get to the Deuce’s hands.  All of that routing and poking at such folders, made all decisions take unnecessarily long.  All the layers of management chiming in on the contents of the folders to have the right political tone to the contents, made the contents and hence the decisions lame.  It is no wonder that Toyota and others entered the market and stole share from Ford and GM. Of course, this is my perception from forty years ago.

I really liked the movie and will no doubt watch it again.  Beyond what I have wrote about here, the story of Shelby and Miles and what they accomplished with Ford's backing and input was amazing.