Monday, February 10, 2003
By David Kiley / USA TODAY
DETROIT -- Mark Fields was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Paramus, N.J., but his British pronunciation of Jaguar -- as in Jag-U-ar -- is perfect. It had better be.
For the past nine months, Fields has been the chief of Ford Motor's Premium Auto Group, comprised of Jaguar, Volvo, Land Rover and tiny Aston Martin.
It's a high-profile job with a prestigious unit that Ford spent $12 billion assembling and billions more restructuring.
PAG is expected to contribute 25% of Ford's profits by mid-decade with less than 10% of global sales. That means that PAG, which lost money last year, is targeted to generate $1.25 billion a year soon as part of CEO Bill Ford's promise that Ford Motor will have $5 billion to $6 billion in profits by 2006.
While he's trying to do that, Fields, 42, has two other challenges. The first is following Wolfgang Reitzle, the storied product-development chief who came to Ford in 1999 from a career at BMW and who left a year ago following CEO Jacques Nasser's ouster.
Reitzle was a design-driven manager who influenced how cars looked, once leading a clinic for Jaguar designers on the tasteful use of chrome.
Fields says he has different strengths. "I'll have a greater business influence in the company," he says. That's a shorthand way of saying that he'll knock heads with Bill Ford and COO Nick Scheele less often than Reitzle did.
Fields, a sales and marketing executive with a Harvard MBA, already has undone some of the empire Reitzle was creating. He has eliminated much of the PAG headquarters staff, sending people back to the brands and closing expensive office space in London. He also removed Ford's U.S. luxury brand, Lincoln, from PAG and returned it to Ford North America.
The second challenge is protecting the credibility of the luxury brands while Ford, in a cost-cutting mode, tries to make them share bits, bolts and bumpers with Ford, Lincoln and Mazda.
That won't be easy. Ford already has earned some mixed reviews for the Jaguar X-Type, which shares an engineering platform with the European Ford Mondeo, and for the Jaguar S-Type, which shares underpinnings with Lincoln LS and Ford Thunderbird.
The X-Type, for instance, gets generally high marks for driving performance but loses as many for a cramped cabin and switches and knobs that feel more Ford than Jag.
Newer products from the group built on unique platforms, such as the Volvo XC90 sport-utility vehicle and a new Jaguar XJ flagship, haven't suffered from the same criticisms.
"It's not a question of whether we can do better; it's, 'Are we learning?' " Fields says about creating Jaguars and Volvos that are true to their heritage without spending $2 billion on every new car.
The next big test comes this fall when a new Volvo small car, replacing the S40, goes on sale. It shares extensively with the next Ford Focus and '04 Mazda Protege.
Fields, who was CEO of Ford-controlled Mazda in Japan before taking on PAG, says he is sensitive to the pitfalls of developing vehicles from different brands together.
"The Mazda Tribute just looks too much like a Ford Escape, because when one team got something good, the other team wanted it, too," he says. "These cars coming will feel, look, brake and drive differently. I think people will be impressed."
For instance, Fields recently got the product teams at his brands to agree on sharing a transmission with Ford to go with Volvo, Jaguar and Land Rover V-6 engines.
"They each simply couldn't afford their own transmission, but the one we will buy can be tailored and tuned to fit the driving character of each brand," Fields says. "We have to do that kind of stuff to save big money."
Still, Fields says PAG is being cautious in looking for bits and pieces to share and concentrating on parts such as axles, window regulators and navigation systems to which aficionados of the brands aren't emotionally attached.
Ford ownership has had some benefits for the luxury brands. Jaguar, Volvo and Land Rover have all cracked the top 15 brands in J.D. Power and Associates ranking for customer satisfaction. Jaguar and Land Rover have made substantial gains in quality, as well.
But Ford's push for sales volume seemed to take a toll on Jaguar last year. Production was pumped up, and Jaguar wound up with too many X-Types and S-Types on dealer lots. That forced advertising focused on lease deals and discounts at the expense of ads designed to create an appetite for the brand.
Goldman Sachs auto analyst Gary Lapidus says it looked at times as though Ford was altering Jag's cost-be-damned image into a price-conscious one, not a desirable quality in a luxury brand.
Now, Fields says Jaguar's sales pace needs to slow after three years of double-digit growth. Toward that end, Ford recently cut back X-Type production.
"We have to be careful about how fast and how far we grow Jaguar, and Land Rover too, because you can do unnatural things like discounting, which hurts residual values," Fields says. "Then you make the whole brand less valuable."
By David Kiley / USA TODAY
DETROIT -- Mark Fields was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Paramus, N.J., but his British pronunciation of Jaguar -- as in Jag-U-ar -- is perfect. It had better be.
For the past nine months, Fields has been the chief of Ford Motor's Premium Auto Group, comprised of Jaguar, Volvo, Land Rover and tiny Aston Martin.
It's a high-profile job with a prestigious unit that Ford spent $12 billion assembling and billions more restructuring.
PAG is expected to contribute 25% of Ford's profits by mid-decade with less than 10% of global sales. That means that PAG, which lost money last year, is targeted to generate $1.25 billion a year soon as part of CEO Bill Ford's promise that Ford Motor will have $5 billion to $6 billion in profits by 2006.
While he's trying to do that, Fields, 42, has two other challenges. The first is following Wolfgang Reitzle, the storied product-development chief who came to Ford in 1999 from a career at BMW and who left a year ago following CEO Jacques Nasser's ouster.
Reitzle was a design-driven manager who influenced how cars looked, once leading a clinic for Jaguar designers on the tasteful use of chrome.
Fields says he has different strengths. "I'll have a greater business influence in the company," he says. That's a shorthand way of saying that he'll knock heads with Bill Ford and COO Nick Scheele less often than Reitzle did.
Fields, a sales and marketing executive with a Harvard MBA, already has undone some of the empire Reitzle was creating. He has eliminated much of the PAG headquarters staff, sending people back to the brands and closing expensive office space in London. He also removed Ford's U.S. luxury brand, Lincoln, from PAG and returned it to Ford North America.
The second challenge is protecting the credibility of the luxury brands while Ford, in a cost-cutting mode, tries to make them share bits, bolts and bumpers with Ford, Lincoln and Mazda.
That won't be easy. Ford already has earned some mixed reviews for the Jaguar X-Type, which shares an engineering platform with the European Ford Mondeo, and for the Jaguar S-Type, which shares underpinnings with Lincoln LS and Ford Thunderbird.
The X-Type, for instance, gets generally high marks for driving performance but loses as many for a cramped cabin and switches and knobs that feel more Ford than Jag.
Newer products from the group built on unique platforms, such as the Volvo XC90 sport-utility vehicle and a new Jaguar XJ flagship, haven't suffered from the same criticisms.
"It's not a question of whether we can do better; it's, 'Are we learning?' " Fields says about creating Jaguars and Volvos that are true to their heritage without spending $2 billion on every new car.
The next big test comes this fall when a new Volvo small car, replacing the S40, goes on sale. It shares extensively with the next Ford Focus and '04 Mazda Protege.
Fields, who was CEO of Ford-controlled Mazda in Japan before taking on PAG, says he is sensitive to the pitfalls of developing vehicles from different brands together.
"The Mazda Tribute just looks too much like a Ford Escape, because when one team got something good, the other team wanted it, too," he says. "These cars coming will feel, look, brake and drive differently. I think people will be impressed."
For instance, Fields recently got the product teams at his brands to agree on sharing a transmission with Ford to go with Volvo, Jaguar and Land Rover V-6 engines.
"They each simply couldn't afford their own transmission, but the one we will buy can be tailored and tuned to fit the driving character of each brand," Fields says. "We have to do that kind of stuff to save big money."
Still, Fields says PAG is being cautious in looking for bits and pieces to share and concentrating on parts such as axles, window regulators and navigation systems to which aficionados of the brands aren't emotionally attached.
Ford ownership has had some benefits for the luxury brands. Jaguar, Volvo and Land Rover have all cracked the top 15 brands in J.D. Power and Associates ranking for customer satisfaction. Jaguar and Land Rover have made substantial gains in quality, as well.
But Ford's push for sales volume seemed to take a toll on Jaguar last year. Production was pumped up, and Jaguar wound up with too many X-Types and S-Types on dealer lots. That forced advertising focused on lease deals and discounts at the expense of ads designed to create an appetite for the brand.
Goldman Sachs auto analyst Gary Lapidus says it looked at times as though Ford was altering Jag's cost-be-damned image into a price-conscious one, not a desirable quality in a luxury brand.
Now, Fields says Jaguar's sales pace needs to slow after three years of double-digit growth. Toward that end, Ford recently cut back X-Type production.
"We have to be careful about how fast and how far we grow Jaguar, and Land Rover too, because you can do unnatural things like discounting, which hurts residual values," Fields says. "Then you make the whole brand less valuable."