Retirement
This week marks 20 years since my retirement from Ford Motor Company. At the time in May of 2000, the economy was doing well so retiring at a relatively young age was fortunately doable. Executives of the company were restricted from selling shares of Ford stock, so I had been able to accumulate a bunch of shares in my 401K that the company matched each year. On the advice of my stock broker, once the restrictions were lifted after retirement, all my Ford shares were sold.
So with our nest egg in place from the sale of the shares, we've been fortunately able to weather the subsequent financial storms so far, including the current problems, thanks to the stellar advice from our skilled broker, to whom we’ll be forever grateful.
Retirement allowed me to try several encore careers, such as teaching, private equity, politics, charitable boards and of course, blog writing, all which I enjoyed tremendously. But last fall I decided to retire for good. The run is over except you’re still stuck reading my blogs until the memories fade out. One such memory follows:
A position I held at Ford in the mid-90’s was heading up the Explorer program in the early days of sport utility vehicles.
We were trying to beat Jeep and Chevy to the punch with a 4 wheel drive vehicle designed for the highway, not just off-road. At the time, most of the SUV’s on the market had underpowered V6 engines and we concluded Explorer sales would double if the larger but smoother V8 could be squeezed into the vehicle's compact engine compartment.
I recall the day like it was yesterday when Paul G, an engineering supervisor who worked for me came up and requested $20,000 to have a supplier design and tool a thinner harmonic balancer, a flywheel-like device mounted on the front of engine crankshafts to improve smoothness. He claimed that with the thinner balancer, the existing powerful Mustang V8 could be packaged in the Explorer. That got my attention and the funds were approved.
Shortly thereafter we formed a skeleton team headed by Paul who contracted with Roush Racing (famous for the Roush Mustang) to design the Mustang V8 into the Explorer. The best part was testing the Explorer with the throaty Mustang V8 installed. What a rush compared to the sluggish V6!
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| 1996 Explorer V8 |
V8 engines have a long tradition within the company, in fact the first was invented and patented by Henry Ford back in 1932 as documented in this video of the milestone.
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| Henry Ford and the 1932 V8 |
Once we figured out how to fit the V8 into the Explorer, the problem became finding an assembly plant to handle the expected volume increase, since the plant making Explorers was at capacity because the Ranger pick-up truck was also built on the same line. We concluded some of the customers for the existing Aerostar minivan built in another plant would likely switch to the sportier Explorer, so why not build both vehicles on the same assembly line so volumes could be easily adjusted to demand. So in less than six months, we were able to launch the V8 and double vehicle production, culminating eventually in the Explorer being recognized as the best-selling SUV of all time with over 8 million sales.
But what really upset us was the ugly Chevy Blazer beat out the Explorer for Motor Trend SUV of the year in 1996 even though we outsold them 2:1. Fake news!
However, the Explorer V8 team was recognized in Ford’s annual report that year for their nimble accomplishments. Paul G is on the far right in the brown shirt on this team photo taken at Roush surrounded by the V8 engine.
The added volume contributed to record company profits that in turn drove the stock price up dramatically, which eventually led to my retirement a few years later on the first day eligible, May 1, 2000. Ironically, shortly thereafter, NHTSA initiated a formal investigation into manufacturing defects in the Firestone tires used on the Explorer, that culminated in a costly recall of all the tires as documented in this wikipedia segment on the fiasco. Ford stock hasn’t been the same since. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky that good, that is if you have a wise stock broker!
Stay healthy, Fish Report readers.
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