SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co.
"We have to stabilize the business right now," Mark Fields, Ford's president for American operations told reporters late on Monday. "We have to pick our shots on where we want to go out, and we have to get the business back to consistent profitability."
Asked if Ford could try to rush a new vehicle to market with a "crash" program that would reduce the typical three-year development cycle, Fields cited the risks of hurrying.
"Sometimes if we rush things just for the sake of time, there's a tendency to cut corners," he said. "I want to make sure that we're very careful about that and not let the organization get ahead of itself."
Analysts have said steps Ford is taking now to ready new models will not be fully reflected in its results until 2009 because of the lead time needed for development, a risk Fields acknowledged.
"The next number of quarters will be interesting, given what we are trying to accomplish," he said.
Fields was speaking at an event to promote the November launch of the Ford Edge, a "crossover" vehicle that he called the most important new product for the company this year
Crossover vehicles are small sport utility vehicles built on car platforms, offering improved gas mileage compared with truck-based SUVs.
Analysts believe crossovers will be the fastest-growing auto segment over the next few years, with as many as 70 competing models available by 2009.
Fields said newly appointed Ford Chief Executive Alan Mulally, who has been at work full-time for the past two weeks, had signed off from his arrival on the company's stepped-up restructuring plan, which included the most detail the company has provided in recent years on its plans for upcoming products.
Under that revised turnaround plan announced in September, Ford pledged to roll out new models faster, including five new vehicles currently under development.
Ford, which Toyota Motor Corp. <7203.T> is on track to overtake as the No. 2 automaker in the U.S. market, is also cutting some 45,000 jobs.
The company's 75,000 U.S. hourly workers began to consider buyout offers this week under a package, negotiated with Ford's major union, that remains open until late November.
Ford is aiming to cut some 30,000 factory jobs, but Fields said it was too early to say how successful the program would be. "We'll really have an idea at the end of November of what the take rate is," he said.
Fields also said Ford would be more "disciplined" about production plans heading into 2007 to avoid the kind of steep cut it had to make in fourth-quarter production this year in response to slowing sales of trucks and sport utility vehicles.
Fields said Ford expected that the overall U.S. light vehicle market would hold relatively steady at between 16 and 17 million units sold per year, assuming "decent (growth domestic product) growth, interest rates that moderate and real income growth."
Ford has said its own share of the U.S. market could drop to 14 percent in coming years, down from near 16 percent currently and more than 25 percent in 1995.
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