Posted on Thursday 1 May 2008
The former CFO of Chrysler and chief aide to Kirk Kerkorian and his Tracinda investment company, Jerry York, has given some insight about his thoughts on the current state of Ford and its subsidiaries. York, who met with Ford CEO Alan Mulally last month, thinks the Blue Oval chief will sell Volvo and Mercury but will likely retain Lincoln.
He said cutting Volvo and Mercury from Ford’s lineup is the right thing to do and that’s what he would do if he had the top job. “I’m very confident that (Mulally’s plan) is the answer and I think you’ll see that he’ll put Volvo on the market within the next year and a half,” York told Automotive News. “There’s no rational reason for keeping Volvo or Mercury.”
York’s opinion does have a great deal of clout as the company he represents, Tracinda Corp, only this week announced it was expanding its share in Ford by buying an additional 20 million shares. York was also Tracinda’s representative back in 2006 when the investment group held a 9.9% stake in GM and was one of the key backers for a partnership between GM and Renault-Nissan. When asked if Ford needed an alliance partner, York declined to speculate.
I can see there being a potential buyer for Volvo out there, but I can’t see anything but killing off Mercury. How can you sell off a brand who’s nothing more than badge engineered Fords. Unless a Chinese company wants to buy the brand and start from scratch.
Hmm! A billionaire buys a rather large amount of stock and then has his aides bark orders. I believe he did this over at Chrysler ofcourse nobody listened, so Kirk threw all his toys out of the pram and put his money else where.
Now look where Chrysler is today. I hope the arrogance at Chrysler does not rule at Ford too!
RGB2: yes there would be buyers for volvo and yes the only option would be to kill merc. but for those same reasons, ford should keep them. volvo would get snatched up really quick on the open market. they’ve got great image, and technology. merc has to die because its just badge engineering. so where is the incentive to kill off a brand that is 99% ford anyways? is it really worth it?
MWOW: I hope mullaly has the brains to not listen to this clown. Volvo is probably the biggest reason why the current focus and mazda3 are so good. if ford gets rid of volvo now, they’ll effectively destroy their chances of doing anything in the sedan market.
Thats just it Chris Mullaly does not have the brains. He is as anti car as you can get. With Volvo coming in at a loss last quarter he’ll veiw it as bad business to keep Volvo and not look at these great designs we have that create passion in our product line to the consumer.
From what I understand, the seats in my new Mustang are straight out of a Volvo of some kind. Those are the best seats I’ve ever had. I hope they keep Volvo.
Other than that, it should be Ford and Lincoln, kind of like it should be Chevrolet and Cadillac…
But I’ll tell you what, that Mercury spokesmodel is a total hottie. So is the Cadillac chick…