I feel your frustration, man, and I do see your point, but I disagree with the direction of your anger. The dealership isn't the company, and it appears that your bad experience was with the dealer, not the company. It's like blaming Coca-Cola when the vending machine eats your dollar. Coke tries to make sure you're happy, but with the middle-men in the way, it's not the easiest thing in the world, and from a customer's standpoint, it's very easy to blame Coke and drink Pepsi. Same thing holds for the automotive world, and we, as a company, can't afford that.
Honestly, if I didn't work for the company, after my experience with my 98 Sport, I would have never bought another Ford again. (It was legally declared a lemon) If anyone else here had a 49-page service history with less than 50,000 miles on it (I did!!) then you can relate. I think the key difference is that I deal with a dealership that took care of me as a customer when the company wouldn't. The dealer bent over backwards to fix it when it was broke, but it doesn't change the fact that it spent almost 2 months in the shop in the first 12 months I had it. I don't blame Ford, I blame the guide that failed, I blame the supplier that made the TPS that left me stranded a week after I bought it, I blame the putz on the line that forgot to install the rubber piece on the driver's side of the sunroof opening, etc, etc.... Ford tried to build the best vehicle they knew how at the time they built it. Hind-sight is always 20/20, both for the car companies and their consumers.
As for gage, my best guess on that one is that 'gage' may be more commonly acceptable in europe, Mexico, and Canada, and it was cheaper to use one somewhat uncommon but perfectly legitimate spelling here to avoid the need for a separate gauge cluster abroad. Regardless, 'gage' is a perfectly correct substitution for 'gauge' but fits in the little bulb better IMHO. In this case, I suspect, 'grammatically unconventional' was a justified trade-off for 'cheaper.'
The vibe in the trenches is morbidly optimistic. We're all doing our jobs to the best of our ability, just as we always have. We know how to do our jobs and do them well. It's not the lowly hourly employees that have piloted this company into the choppy waters we're in. The media likes to blame us, the hourly workforce, for all the ills of the company, bt it's like blaming the kitchen staff for the titanic sinking. But, we're making progress in both the new vehicles we design, as well as the refining process by which we design and manufacture those vehicles. I (somewhat optimistically) think the company will be around for a good long time to come, but in a much more refined and streamlined form. We need to adapt, as a company, to the changing marketplace, and are actively taking steps to do so. In a company as large as Ford, having been around for over 100 years nowand with a global structure as complex as ours is, change is difficult to impliment, but it's happening, slowly but surely. Whether or not that change takes place fast enough to keep the house of cards from collapsing remains to be seen. (For my sake, I hope so!!)
But I digress.... I don't necessarily think we're playing catch-up as a company. I think we're simply not as far out front as we've become accustomed to. The media and to a certain extent, the analysts, have focused so closely on North American Operations since we were the only division that didn't make a profit last year. We still had a record sales year (in terms of volume) with a great line-up of old products, and with the launch of all the new stuff this year, have continued to improve. What a lot of people have failed to realize is what division has floated the company through the last decade and a half? NAA. How many years in a row did NAA turn a profit when European, Asian, Australian, and South American operations all were tanked? How many times did people shake their heads when Ford purchased or took over severely ailing foreign companies? How long did it take to get Jaguar, Aston Martin, Volvo, Land Rover, and Mazda back above the board again? Do we have problems now? Sure. But a couple off years in one facet of a century-old company as globally diverse as Ford isn't the end of the world. (Just my opinion)
Maybe I'm a bit biased seeing as they put food on my table every day (and have since before my grandfather was born) but I see more than just the numbers the analysts and investors see.
Sorry for the diatribe.... you asked...
-Joe
