Despite the holiday weekend, a lot of news surrounded America's No. 2 car company Ford Motor Co. culminating in a late Tuesday announcement that William Clay Ford Jr. would step down.
Only days after telling Newsweek that he would be open to stepping down if the right CEO candidate became available, Ford announced he was handing the reins to Boeing Co. executive Alan Mulally. Ford is stepping down after five years at the helm of the company that his great grandfather founded. It has been a bumpy road for both Ford and the company. The road became especially pothole ridden the last seven months as sales consistently declined.
Shortly before stepping aside, Ford announced a number of changes. As most Americans were packing up to head out for the holiday weekend, Ford quietly indicated it would end production of its minivans. Evidently those vehicles people were packing were not Ford Firestar or Mercury Monterey minivans. Ford's never had luck in the minivan business, always playing catch-up with rivals. Today, the minivan segment is dominated by creator Chrysler, and of course Honda and Toyota.
Ford plans on replacing the minivan with a series of new crossover vehicles dubbed the Edge and Fairlane. Ford has so-far only released one crossover vehicle, the poorly-received Freestyle, which for all intents and purposes is a wagon version of its equally lackluster 500 sedan. Both the Edge and larger Fairlane concepts, pictured above, seem like better examples of the crossover concept because it seems to mix more SUV elements than car — something the Freestyle failed to do.
Finally, The Sunday Times of London reported that Aston Martin CEO
Ulrich Bez may be preparing a bid for the luxury car maker. The report doesn't indicate how Bez would pull off such a deal, but odds are private equity money would be involved. —Matthew Wurtzel
See Bill Ford Jr. resignation story from MarketWatch
See Bill Ford Jr. interview from Newsweek
See minivan story from The Detroit News
See Aston Martin story from The Sunday Times of London
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