Round the World Trip - Dave's Midwestern Ohio Memories

Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

Round the World Trip

Continuing the Round the World venture during my days at Ford in the early 80’s, after stopping in Hiroshima, Japan, my Mazda sidekick Kurahashi and I headed to Seoul, South Korea to visit Kia, an automotive company partially owned by Mazda at the time Ford acquired 33% of the Japanese auto company. Since Mazda owned 24% of Kia, Ford had an 8% stake. The purpose of our stop was to see if any vehicles under development by Kia could be rebadged to be Ford products in the Far East.

The Kia Sportage, a small sport utility vehicle, was of interest. The vehicle was well designed, but a little too small for the US market. So instead Kurahashi and I recommended Ford and Mazda jointly develop a compact utility platform, which was INDEED pursued with the outcome being the Ford Escape and Mazda Tribute, a program I incidentally co-lead with Kurahashi. There were other derivatives off the platform, like the Mercury Mariner, Ford Kuga and Lincoln Corsair, all told now selling about 500,000 units per year around the world.

Needless to say, jointly developing a vehicle with Mazda meant many additional visits to Japan, 13 trips in all during my Ford career. A highlight of many trips was a visit to Kobe for some of their world famous beef after the direct flight from Detroit to Osaka before taking the bullet train to Hiroshima. A tour of a Kobe beef farm was a memorable highlight, which I’ll write about in a future blog.

After South Korea, Kurahashi and I headed to Thailand, where Ford and Mazda were building a new truck plant to produce the Ford Ranger and Mazda B-Series pick-ups for the Far East markets. The plant was on schedule and under budget, so our job was easy!

That allowed us time to explore Bangkok and the outstanding food of Thailand. I learned first hand the hard way that the most spiciest Thai food comes first, with each successive course less and less spicy. Those first tastes really called for a lot of beer to squelch the spiciness, but it hooked me on Thai food from that moment on.

Next we traveled to Kuala Lumpur, Malasia, the site of an electronics joint venture making automotive engine controllers for Ford and Mazda vehicles. Since electronics were becoming more and more integral to the vehicle, it was felt that to best control the supply of such parts, making them internally was crucial to high quality and on-time delivery of such components. That strategy has obviously fallen apart as evidenced by the current shortage of integrated chips severely restricting automotive production.

Kuala Lampur is a beautiful city and the capital of Malasia. It used to be part of the British Commonwealth, gaining its independence in 1957, but still maintains a parliamentary form of government. The electronics plant was just being launched and had available capacity for additional product, which was recommended but never pursued. About that time, Henry Ford II stepped down as CEO, and he always insisted that Ford not invest in any Communist-run country. So rather than China, we were always looking for plant sites in the Far East in countries other than China. That policy changed when HFII stepped down, but it meant Ford was a decade behind its competitors in growing in China. To this day, Ford is barely in the top 10 auto sales in China. Ditto for Russia. Frankly, I agreed with the policy, but other competitors obviously didn’t.

We couldn’t get a flight out of Kuala Lampur to our next site, Madras, India, so we took a train to Singapore and explored the amazing city for a half day before catching an overnight flight to India. Singapore used to be part of Malasia, but was expelled in 1965 for ideological differences to become it’s own country, also parliamentarian by design because of it’s former British rule. Today, Singapore is considered the most expensive city in the world, and back in the early 1980’s it’s citizens enjoyed an amazing quality of life. Now it’s more of a tax haven for corporations and the rich as it has the lowest tax rate among developed countries. Plus it’s crime rate is essentially zero, with no tolerance for corruption or illegal activity. Some of their punishments are bizarre and archaic; for example, caning is the predominant punishment for misdemeanors (for spitting chewing gum on the street for example). Sure seems to work, but ouch!

Arriving in Madras, now called Chennai, along the eastern shore of India, was quite a contrast to beautiful Singapore. Madras is famous for a lightweight cotton fabric with a plaid design. The various colors would purposely “bleed” into each other when washed, to provide a distinctive fashion look popular by Ivy Leaguers back in the 1960’s, in sharp contrast to the tie dyed hippy look also prevalent at the time.

Ford and Mazda were just starting the construction of an assembly plant in Madras. The road to the plant site from the hotel was laden with resting cows in the median strip, an amazing site. Cows are considered sacred in India and are left to roam freely. Crazy!

The new plant under construction on a 350 acre site was a modern facility in sharp contrast to the primitive structures in the rest of Madras. Consistent with Henry Ford’s original strategy to bring affordable transportation and well paying jobs to the masses, similarly this plant has done the same to the Chennai region over the 40 years since the plant was built. Engine machining operations, a stamping facility and vehicle assembly are included on the site, employing over 3000 people.

After Madras, I flew back to Detroit via Amsterdam while Kurahashi returned to Japan. Over the course of the one week trip, I had “slept" 4 nights on an airplane, so upon arriving at Amsterdam’s Shiphol airport after an all night flight, I can still distinctly recall the amazingly soothing voice of the female airport announcer. Here’s her story!

In 2015, Ford divested itself of it’s shares of Mazda allowing the two companies to move forward on their own. As part of the transaction, Ford ended up with full ownership of all the plants we visited during our Around The World trip in the early 1980’s, and all but the Malasia electronics plant are still in operation. After returning to one of the plants years later, I observed how fit the workers were compared to the scrawny new hires working at the time the plant opened. And the parking lot was full, as now the employees could afford to buy a vehicle. Being apart of Ford’s growth into the Far East and to see those local economies thrive via free enterprise replicating Henry Ford’s original strategy in the US was a highlight of my 35 year automotive career.

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