Ford's new Premier Automotive Group design chief lands as unit faces change - Ford Forums

Stacy94PGT · 06-03-2002, 09:05

By BRADFORD WERNLE
Automotive News Europe

LONDON - When Mazda President Mark Fields arrives here in July to become chairman of Ford Motor Co's luxury car group, he will find a new design director, Peter Horbury, already hard at work.

Horbury, 52, was named last week as executive director of design for the Premier Automotive Group. It's a new position for Premier Automotive.

Horbury had been chief designer at Volvo Car Corp., one of Premier Automotive's brands. The others are Jaguar, Land Rover and Aston Martin. In his new role, he reports to Richard Parry-Jones, Ford Motor's product development chief, and J Mays, the company's design boss.

Parry-Jones is in London, while Mays is in Dearborn, Mich.

The new reporting structure may signal diminished autonomy for Premier Automotive Group under Fields' leadership.

His predecessor, Wolfgang Reitzle, treated Premier Automotive as his personal kingdom.

Indeed, ousted Ford CEO Jacques Nasser created Premier Automotive Group in 1999 to lure Reitzle back into the auto industry after his departure from BMW.

The changes also signal that Premier Automotive Group will be a very different place now that the Nasser-Reitzle era has ended. Under CEO Bill Ford, Ford Motor is trying to recover traditional values that were lost during Nasser's attempts to reinvent the company.

Reitzle, trained as an engineer, was fanatical about design and product development issues. When he visited the London headquarters of Premier Automotive Group's various brands, he spent time in the styling departments, suggesting tweaks to improve the designs. Designers and engineers at Aston Martin, Jaguar, Land Rover and Volvo felt Reitzle intuitively understood what they did.

Fields' experience is primarily in marketing and sales. He has led a Mazda turnaround that is showing signs of success. He is very tuned into brand issues, but he lacks Reitzle's engineering and product expertise.

Reitzle was an outsider to the Ford Motor culture and frequently chafed at the huge company's bureaucracy. But Fields, an American, is a Ford Motor insider who has been groomed for big things.

Fields held his first meetings in May with Robert Dover, chief of the British Premier Automotive Group brands, and William Cosgrove, Premier Automotive's CFO. A source said Dover and Cosgrove came away enthused about their new boss. Fields declined to talk about Premier Automotive Group meetings when he met with reporters May 24 in London. He is still Mazda president until the end of June.

Horbury worked for Chrysler and Ford Motor in Europe in the 1970s. He has held various posts within Volvo's design department since 1979.

In the 1990s, he helped steer Volvo away from its boxy look. He fought battles within Volvo's design department and with upper management to make that happen. He used the term "Revolvolution" to describe how Volvo could become more stylish without jeopardizing its reputation for function and safety.

Horbury is the second Volvo executive to win a major appointment in Premier Automotive Group.

Hans Gustavsson, who had been Volvo's product development chief, in December was named executive director of commonality programs planning for Premier Automotive. Both Horbury and Gustavsson are in London.

One Ford Motor source said Reitzle's departure actually might result in more attention being given to product by top Ford officials.

In the evolving Premier Automotive Group structure, the individual brands are holding product meetings roughly every three weeks. Reitzle never attended those meetings, but Gustavsson and Parry-Jones attend every one.

Parry-Jones is devoting about 50 percent of his time to the Premier Automotive brands.

Reitzle had tried not to let Premier Automotive Group become bureaucratic, preferring that it be a virtual organization that didn't hinder the brands. But the appointment of group chiefs in the areas of design and product development would seem to indicate that the organization is getting larger.

Having outbid Opel to keep Horbury's services, Ford Motor must prove he can serve as a guiding hand to keep the Premier Automotive brands dynamic and distinct. What Ford Motor wants to avoid is turning a top designer into the head of a new layer of bureaucracy.