{"id":9487,"date":"2009-07-17T13:00:44","date_gmt":"2009-07-17T18:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thedetroitbureau.com\/?p=9487"},"modified":"2009-07-17T17:04:58","modified_gmt":"2009-07-17T22:04:58","slug":"farleys-star-rising-at-ford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/2009\/07\/farleys-star-rising-at-ford\/","title":{"rendered":"Farley\u2019s Star Rising at Ford"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ford's
Ford's global marketing chief, Jim Farley, now adds day-to-day responsibility for Canada, Mexico and Latin America to his portfolio.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A one-time Toyota executive with even deeper family ties to Detroit is watching his star rise at the Ford Motor Co.<\/p>\n

Jim Farley, who returned to the Motor City, two years ago, to take on global marketing operations, at Ford, has now been given the added duties of overseeing day-to-day operations in Canada, Mexico and South America.\u00a0 The announcement, which takes effect on September 1st, firmly entrenches the boyish-looking executive as one of Ford’s fastest-rising stars.<\/p>\n

Observers say it also puts him more clearly in the running, long-term, to replace Ford’s Chief Executive Officer Alan Mulally.\u00a0 The other executive considered a possible successor, when Mulally eventually retires, is Mark Fields, Ford’s President of the Americas, to whom Farley will now report to.<\/p>\n

“Jim has made great progress connecting with our customers and building a strong foundation for our success in North America,” said Mulally, in explanation of Farley’s new duties.<\/p>\n

\"Keep<\/a>
Keep on top of the latest breaking news!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At 45, Farley is part of a youthful management team that has aggressively attacked Ford’s long-running problems, a task made more difficult by the fact that it hasn’t had the cover of bankruptcy, like cross-town rivals General Motors and Chrysler, to order dramatic changes in the company’s operations and cost structure.\u00a0 A key challenge for Farley has been to get the second-largest of the domestic makers taken seriously again, especially outside the Midwest.<\/p>\n

Farley likes to point out that, “My connection with Ford goes way back to my first car, a 1966 Ford Mustang. I bought it when I was 15, restored it and drove it from California to Michigan.”\u00a0 In fact, his ties to the automaker run much, much deeper.<\/p>\n

Farley’s grandfather, Emmet Tracy, was one of the first employees of company founder Henry Ford.\u00a0 “I can visualize him walking into the factory with his lunch pail in his hand, one of the nameless faceless folks” that helped churn out Model Ts by the millions,” says Farley, adding that, “He owed everything to Ford Motor Co.”<\/p>\n

Later, Tracy opened a Lincoln-Mercury dealership on the Hill, in Grosse Pointe.\u00a0 And eventually, he ran a supplier operation, Alma Piston Co., where Farley would work during his summers off from school.<\/p>\n

Despite that connection, Farley decided to look elsewhere when it came time to get a job.\u00a0 Actually, his initial inclination was to steer clear of the auto industry entirely, after earning, first, a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University, and then an MBA from UCLA.\u00a0 Farley is a serious gearhead who takes pride in getting his fingernails dirty working on his private collection, which includes a classic, ’35 Ford 5-window hotrod.\u00a0 If anything, he says, “I was scared about going into the auto business because I thought it would ruin my interest in cars.”<\/p>\n

The young grad briefly tried working at the classic car restoration shop, in suburban Los Angeles, run by the legendary American Formula One racing champ, the late Phil Hill.\u00a0 But while it provided the opportunity to work on some of the world’s rarest automotive collectibles, the gig with Hill was more hobby than career, so Farley finally took a job with IBM.\u00a0 It lasted just two years.<\/p>\n

Farley might have been worried about the numbing qualities of life as an auto executive, but an offer from Toyota, which, in 1990, was just beginning its explosive rise up the U.S. and global sales charts, was “just too compelling.”<\/p>\n

The offer positioned him as product planner for the new Lexus division, which was just launching, but which would soon become America’s largest luxury brand.\u00a0 Over the coming years, Farley would cycle through a series of jobs, often accepting unlikely offers that to some seemed a step off the normal fast-track career path.\u00a0 But his choices seemed to keep him positioned as a go-to guy who understood the challenges Toyota was facing as it sought to grow from niche player to mainstream manufacturer.<\/p>\n

Farley might have finished out his career at Toyota had it not been for a curious set of coincidences.\u00a0 Mulally, the former second-in-command at Boeing had been lured to Ford by family heir and outgoing CEO William Clay Ford Jr.\u00a0 in Autumn 2006, and quickly made some unsettling assessments about the company’s brain-drain.<\/p>\n

“I followed Toyota very closely, when I was at Boeing,” recalls Mulally, adding that, “I became aware of (Farley) when he started doing Scion.”\u00a0 At Ford, the young exec’s name came up again, this time in conversations with Chairman Bill Ford Jr.\u00a0 Mulally picked up the phone, and began what would turn into a long but ultimately successful effort to lure Farley back to Michigan.<\/p>\n

It was a “gut-wrenching” decision, Farley recalls, adding that, “Toyota was my life.\u00a0 These were all my friends.”\u00a0 But he saw Ford as an opportunity to do something significant for “a company that can create icons,” like the Mustang and F-Series pickups.<\/p>\n

In his new position, Farley is working to create icons of his own.\u00a0 Part of the company’s strategy is to play up its decision not to seek a bailout from Washington, unlike GM and Ford.\u00a0 Research by the marketing firm, AutoPacific, Inc., suggests this is paying off in the marketplace, especially when paired with the good media coverage Ford has been getting for new products, such as the Fusion Hybrid, its updated Mustang, an all-new version of the F-Series pickup and the upcoming Fiesta subcompact.<\/p>\n

In an industry where long and fancy titles often bestow more prestige than deserved, Farley’s own business card actually downplays his importance.\u00a0 He was already group vice president of marketing and communications, but in the relatively small circle of executives running Ford, gearhead Farley has also played a role in laying out the automaker’s product strategy.<\/p>\n

Insiders say the Buenos Aires-born executive can be a tough taskmaster.\u00a0 “He’s not afraid to use the F-bomb,” she laughs, referring to Farley’s sometimes salty way of getting his message across.\u00a0 In the traditionally genteel world of Detroit management, that hasn’t always ingratiated Farley.\u00a0But as the latest additions to his portfolio suggest, it’s results that matter, and the recent upturn in Ford’s retail market share has been well-received.<\/p>\n

What’s next is uncertain.\u00a0 Mulally has given no indication he’s ready to move on, though observers expect he will ultimately try to position one of three current lieutenants as his successor, including Fields, product development czar Derrick Kuzak, or Farley.\u00a0 If the one-time Toyota exec can maintain his track record, he could be in for still more promotions to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jim Farley, a one-time rising star at Toyota, with even deeper family ties to Detroit, is now watching his fortunes grow at the Ford Motor Co. TheDetroitBureau.com has the breaking news – and the detailed backstory on 45-year-old Farley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"make":[],"post-state":[],"category_old":[151],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9487"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9487"},{"taxonomy":"make","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/make?post=9487"},{"taxonomy":"post-state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post-state?post=9487"},{"taxonomy":"category_old","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/category_old?post=9487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}