Read American Icon for Free Online Page B

of the situation. Their company was in trouble. Nasser was destroying everything they and their ancestors had built. Bill told them he had looked up and down Ford’s roster and could see no suitable replacement. For two decades, they had let others run their company. Now it was time for a Ford to run Ford again. Bill Ford intended to fire Nasser and replace him as CEO. Heasked for their support.
    He got it.
    By the time Ford’s board met two weeks later, the directors had received many phone calls from family members making their feelings clear. Now Bill Ford delivered his own pitch in person. The only way to restore trust in the company was to put a Ford back in the driver’s seat. He knew being CEO would require a huge commitment on his part, but Ford assured the directors he was willing to do whatever it took to save the company. The directors were moved by Ford’s passionate plea, but many still had doubts about his abilities. It was one thing to run down to the Rouge after an explosion. Managing the day-to-day operations of a multinational corporation was another thing entirely. But they figured he had earned the right to try.
    “We were all a bit hesitant,” one director confided. “But we all wanted him to succeed.”
    * The Model T was not Henry Ford’s first car, but it was his first real success—the one that propelled his company to the forefront of the automobile industry. Ford sold his first vehicle almost a decade earlier, the handmade “Quadricycle” that he assembled in a brick shed behind his home. Ford Motor Company sold its first car, a two-seat runabout, in July 1903.
    *
Flivver
was a common slang term for an inexpensive automobile. The author Upton Sinclair first referred to Henry Ford as the Flivver King in his critical book
The Flivver King: A Story of Ford-America
, which was published by the United Auto Workers in 1937.
    * This was not the result of a conscious decision by the Ford family to step back from the company, but rather the result of the simple fact that there was no Ford old enough to lead the company who wanted the job at the time. Hank the Deuce would remain a director and head of the board’s powerful Finance Committee until his death in 1987.
    * The Ford F-Series, first introduced in 1948, was already the bestselling pickup in America.
    * The Ford Foundation’s ties to the Ford family and the Ford Motor Company were severed completely in 1976. The automaker’s philanthropic arm is now the Ford Motor Company Fund.
    † These Class B shares could be traded among the heirs of Henry Ford, but they would convert to regular Class A shares if they were ever sold outside the family.

CHAPTER 2
Broken
    The internal ailments of business are the ones that require most attention
.
    —H ENRY F ORD
    C heers broke out in Dearborn as word spread that Bill Ford had ousted Jacques Nasser and was taking over Ford Motor Company. Employees actually wept in the parking lot when the Blue Oval was hoisted back up to the top of World Headquarters as a final symbol of Nasser’s undoing. Letters of thanks poured in from dealers around the country, and parts manufacturers breathed a deep sigh of relief. Bill Ford had been right. The only thing that could save the company and mend its tattered relationships with workers, dealers, and suppliers was putting a Ford back in the driver’s seat.
    But not everyone was celebrating. Wall Street had long viewed the Ford family’s control of the automaker as an anachronism that prevented shareholders from realizing the true value of their investment, and analysts openly doubted Bill Ford’s ability to lead. The $5.45 billion loss Ford reported for 2001 did not help. Nasser and the September 11 terrorists were responsible for most of that, but it marked the end of nine years of steady profits and fueled fresh concern about Ford’s future. The company’s credit rating was downgraded and its stock tumbled.
    Bill Ford did what Ford CEOs had always done when