“Doug was a huge win for Ford when he came and (it’s) disappointing to see him go,” said Daniel Ives, analyst at investment firm Wedbush Securities Inc. “Ford is in a different spot (than) when Doug came, and it’s all about product transition.”
Although Ford executives claimed success from Field’s tenure and the skunkworks project, they really have yet to be tested, said Sam Abuelsamid, vice president of market research for automotive communications firm Telemetry Group. Preparing for launch is a milestone that follows a trail of scrapped vehicles like a three-row SUV and all-electric full-size pickup and electrical architectures.
“It remains to be seen if Field had any real success at Ford,” Abuelsamid said. “Certainly what we’ve heard from skunkworks sounds very promising with respect to what it intends to do. But whether or not it’s going to work, it’s too early to tell.”
Abuelsamid described Ford’s reputation as an “ADHD company,” constantly turning its attention to the next new thing instead of following through on plans.
“Field put together a good time in skunkworks,” he said. “Now they have to build it and sell it and continue to iterate on it and build more products off that architecture and avoid stumbling problems that legacy Ford has had for a long time, like with quality.”
An intense product launch cadence following a couple years of few major launches will be a test for Ford, he added, but the company needs fresh, low-cost product: “It can’t get by forever on selling $60,000 to $100,000 pickups and SUVs.”
Kieran Cahill, Ford’s vice president of manufacturing, Europe and international markets group, is retiring effective May 1. Cahill, over 37 years, emphasized continuous improvements in manufacturing and oversaw some of Ford’s most innovative and best-performing plants, according to the automaker.