A Faster Horse Page #3

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all of the new bits and pieces

to make it drive.

That's the only form

that exists.

Nothing real about it.

It's still just a model.

Tom Barnes, he is the leader

from the engineering team.

They're the ones that make

all of the thoughts

and then the sketches,

and the dream and the vision

actually come to reality.

Whatever that car's

gonna drive like,

sound like,

how quick is it,

all that stuff

will come through tom.

If you think

of the mustang as a company,

Dave pericak as

the chief engineer is the ceo,

and tom Barnes

is his chief technical officer.

He's got the lead on all

the technical issues.

Where Dave is more

the captain of the ship,

tom is, I don't know...

Scotty.

Data doesn't show what you'd

feel, which is very odd.

People have been working

on this car for 55 years.

We're just a slice in time.

Nine million people

have bought this car,

so the design people do

what they need to do.

We engineer the car to work

around the awesome looks.

I always like

the creative tension

between the design studio

and the engineering teams.

If you're not frustrated

with the design community,

you probably have

a boring design

because to engineer

a really good design

is a lot harder

than to engineer a box.

You hear a car start

and then you can hear this

and you know-- you're like,

"that's a mustang."

You can tell.

You can hear it.

You hear a car pull away--

and you're like,

"there's a mustang."

We must have

50 different exhausts

that we go through

and we've tuned

to make it sound right.

Engineers can follow

the development of a car

day by day,

almost hour by hour.

When any changes are made,

they instantly have

that information so they

can work out the feasibility.

Most of the time,

it's very, very cool.

Sometimes it can be,

you know, frustrating.

You need to hit certain

timing constraints,

and I always feel like--

try not to look at constraints

and just look where the goal is

and figure out

how to get to the goal.

You want to engineer smart

and you wanna engineer on time.

There are times at night

that that's a lot of pressure.

You don't want to be the guy

who gets to stand up

when we get to job 1

and say to the vice president,

"not quite done yet."

I don't even know how

I'm gonna do that, Brent.

When the decisions

come to Dave,

it's usually,

"here is the cost,"

and-or the trade-offs.

There is no more money.

It is a one-in,

one-out game now.

What keeps him up at night

is the same thing that used

to keep me up at night at this

same point in time,

which is, "what are the things

i don't know?

Because the things I don't know

are gonna hurt me."

I don't know, I mean, I don't

know what to do with this.

Or I don't know

how to escalate.

Don't misunderstand

what we're saying.

The steering wheel does not buzz

nearly as much as it used to,

no doubt,

but it is still buzzing

and especially when

you're the driver,

you're feeling it in your hand,

and you're feeling it in your foot,

and those two together,

you're feeling

a whole lot of vibration.

You need to think ahead

of all those potential things

that could go wrong

and there's a thousand--

more than a thousand of them.

- So you can hear a little bit

of latchiness, right? - Yeah.

They filled that

with a softer rubber.

A lot of what

i end up doing and certainly

what Dave ends up doing is just

pushing, constant pushing--

what's next

and what's beyond?

Let's keep going.

Time lost is our enemy.

Once you get behind,

you never catch up.

Candidly, if we're gonna

have this car out in fall

that means we have to start

building it right now.

That means we

have to be finished

engineering it last month.

When he got the job,

i had, actually,

a discussion with him

about this particular point.

The first thing I noticed was

so many people came up to me

and said,

"don't screw this up."

I mean, high in the company,

low in the company, dealers,

friends of mine

outside the company.

A lot of people just said,

"don't screw this up.

You screw this up, you're

screwing up the entire country.

This is bigger than Ford

so don't screw it up."

We are out

to strengthen our position

in a field where

the risk is high

and where the competition

runs strong.

Our mutual stake

in success is a big one,

perhaps the biggest

any of us will ever have

in a single venture.

I'm Henry Ford ii.

I would like to begin

these brief comments

by offering a Sincere welcome

to all of you

who have joined us,

and we look forward

to a long and mutually

rewarding association

based on friendship,

understanding,

and sound business principles.

Henry Ford

was an interesting guy.

You gotta remember,

he came into the company,

you know, out of the Navy.

I think he was

like 26 or 27.

You seem to get a very nice

reception, Mr. Ford.

A lot more than I deserve,

I'm sure of that.

It would be hard

to be sure of yourself.

I mean, what the hell

do you know at 26 or 27

about running

a major automobile company?

Henry Ford ii was the apple

of Henry Ford i's eye.

I mean, he was his namesake

and the first grandchild

that Henry Ford had

and Henry Ford took him

everywhere.

Henry, did you know

your grandfather well?

Did you--

did you, uh--

well, I felt I knew him

very well, Bob.

We were always brought up

to go out on weekends

out at fairlane

with my grandmother

and grandfather,

and he used to give us,

really,

the run of the place.

It was a difficult

process for him

because he didn't have

the background,

and I don't say that

critically.

He had never worked

in finance.

He never worked in engineering

or manufacturing or purchasing.

To his credit,

he was smart enough

to get people

in the company that did.

Ford was in trouble.

Gm and Chrysler

were better managed.

We brought in a group

of ten young army,

air force officers,

who became known

as the whiz kids.

They are the ten men in

the front row of this picture.

They included Tex Thornton,

Robert McNamara,

and arjay Miller as well.

It was such

an intriguing story.

Here was this tremendous company

in such bad shape.

When we went to Ford,

the whiz kids, back in '46,

to find out how much money they

owed at the end of the year,

they just counted

the open invoices,

but they were about 40 feet

of invoices

and they figured out

it was so many million

per foot of invoices.

That's how they knew

how much money they owed

at the end of the year.

It's hard to believe

how chaotic they were.

The whiz kids took control

of finances in the company,

and they got Mr. Ford

back on track.

The demand for automobiles

in the United States

has been rising

for more than three years

and shows no signs

of tapering off.

He felt he had inherited a company

it was his obligation

to keep it going.

We all liked Henry Ford ii.

He was a warm person.

He was the boss,

but the most important

building block

in the company

are the people.

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