A Faster Horse Page #8

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iacocca asked Ford why,

what he had done wrong?"

And Ford answered,

"i just don't like you."

I don't know if you know,

i was fired

along with iacocca

from the company.

So it's--

it was a dangerous place.

You know.

He came to work one day,

and everything was a normal day.

And when he left that afternoon,

he was fired.

It happened that fast.

On a personal basis,

i liked iacocca.

He was smart...

The energy,

sense of humor.

On the business side,

he had one big fault--

too large an ego.

He actually thought

that he could get the directors

to put him over Henry.

I learned about it,

and when I told Henry Ford

about it,

he fired iacocca.

Did that make him a dictator?

Well, that's the way

you run a company.

You can't run a company

if you're going to have

two guys competing

for the top job.

Get that cleared up right away.

You were asked a question

many, many times.

If you knew how bad it was,

would you have done it?

Nobody would do that in life.

If you knew--

if god let you know

what was coming next,

a lot of guys would go

and shoot themselves.

He don't let you know that,

thank god, okay?

So that's a silly question,

in a way.

Would you like to go

in the infantry for four years

and get shot at?

No.

If I had a choice, no.

If I knew that, I wouldn't have

joined up in the war.

I know, but you don't know

how bad it's gonna be.

So, no, yeah.

That's destiny,

they call that.

Don't fight it.

Next time I'm gonna control

my destiny, though.

My job is not to yell

at people and make--

I'll do that if I need to,

but that's not my job.

My job is to be the biggest

cheerleader in the group.

It's funny,

i think people are more--

they're more than willing

to walk out on a limb,

even if they think

that limb might break,

if they know that you're

gonna be there to catch them.

And I think that's

the biggest thing.

I think that's the freedom.

As a leader,

what I try to do

is I try to give them

the freedom.

There's a lot

of smart people held back

by their own fears

or inhibitions.

And if you allow them to go

out on the edge,

hang out a little bit,

knowing that no matter

what happens,

you will catch them,

they will go out

on the thinnest branches

even though they think,

"that thing's gonna crack,"

they'll go because they know

you're gonna be there for them.

And when they start doing that,

when more and more people

start doing that, the power that

you unleash is unbelievable.

Because when everyone

stays reserved and,

"I'm not gonna do that because

i might fail,"

or, "i might get hurt,"

or whatever,

then the whole team

doesn't progress

as far forward as they could.

But when they're out there

slaying dragons

because they know

that if the dragon gets

a little unruly

that you're gonna come in

and finish him off,

they'll slay dragons

all day long for you, man.

Right?

You want to be interviewed?

Oh, yeah, man.

I'm the man.

What you wanna talk about?

2015 mustang.

- What do you think?

- I think it's an awesome car.

- You think it's an awesome car?

- I think it's gonna sell good

and it's gonna keep a lot

of people working here.

- It's a legend man. It's a legend.

- It is a legend.

And it gets better

and better over time.

That's the beauty of it.

Thank you for helping us

build it, man.

No problem. No problem.

You got me, right?

All right.

At the beginning of a program,

it's all hope and potential

and opportunity and stuff.

You know, frankly,

once you start a program,

95% of what you learn

is bad.

Of course, yeah.

By design, this edge has

to be parallel to this edge.

Right.

It is a tenuous time

in the program,

there's a lot that can

go wrong from here.

I thank you, the Ford motor

company thanks you.

He thanks you.

The shareholders

and stockholders thank you.

Bill Ford thanks you.

Thanks, guys.

All right, what else?

Often times,

you're defending the car.

You're fighting for the car,

and there are days when you

go home and you feel like,

"wow, nobody wants me

to be successful."

Was it deemed a failure

out of cae,

or was it something that,

as we looked at it, we thought,

"hey, it'd be nice to have

another mil or two of clearance?"

I mean, obviously,

the vehicle requirement is no contact

between the bracket

and the solenoid,

and what you guys showed

was a one-mil contact.

Therefore,

it was a failure.

It was a personal foul

of one mil.

The program's hanging

by a millimeter at the moment.

No, it's just that

we believe

that if we're showing contact

from the cae model,

we're likely to have

a fracture.

So I guess that's kind of

where we are.

You very rarely ever see

a repeat chief engineer.

You're either viewed

as being successful

and you get asked to go

do something bigger and better

or you get asked to go do

something different.

All right, so we've got

everybody lined up.

They'll re-mesh the file,

they'll get it rerun tonight.

The model will be done

by noon tomorrow, yes?

Having looked at the model,

and maybe I'm being

a wild-ass optimist here,

I think we're on the verge

of getting that.

I think we're right there.

At the end of the day,

we've got to have

zero major issues,

and like I said,

it's not done until we get

all the way up to job 1.

Dave's been a chief for,

you know, quite a while,

so in a lot of ways,

it's make or break sometimes.

But I mean, you just have

to live--

you just have to live

for the car that you're on.

No.

I can be very

clear about that. No.

One year I counted

every bird that we had.

I just said,

"I'm gonna do it."

They're literally like

our friends.

I don't even fill

the back birdfeeder anymore

because you fill it up,

and an hour later,

squirrels will have

just devoured it,

thrown it all on the ground

and whatever.

Tom still fills the back one.

I don't.

Absolutely, squirrels deserve

every right they,

you know,

we can provide them.

I don't think he works

harder than the job needs.

There are times where i

wish there was a cutoff

where it would stop.

But a lot of times it doesn't.

It can't stop.

We say to each other,

"it is what it is."

You know, we've worked

on this 50th car since 2009.

It takes a long time.

You have to have endurance,

and you just have to keep...

Going.

So many things

are very simple,

but it's very hard

to make something special.

You know, I mean, you can

look at it different ways.

You could say,

"it's just a car,"

you know, whatever.

There's 60 million cars made

a year in the world now

and this is just, you know,

one out of probably 1,000

different varieties

you could buy.

Lots of people do it

and it should be pretty simple

and standard,

but it is very complicated,

and it has to be right.

It's so hard to explain

because it's so big.

We are here

for mustangs across America

for the 50th anniversary

of mustang,

and it's the second day

of the cross-country trip.

And we will be driving

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