“He wore granny glasses, and he put out a granny car.” That's how one auto writer, quoted in Robert Lacey's excellent 1986 book, Ford, summed up Robert S. McNamara's tenure at Ford Motor Company, during which he launched the plain-jane Ford Falcon compact to compete with Chevy's Corvair and Chrysler's Valiant. As is so often the case with McNamara, who died Monday in Washington, aged 93, it was a neat soundbite, but nowhere near the whole story.
McNamara was of course best known as a controversial Secretary of Defense in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, where he oversaw the escalation of America's involvement in the Vietnam War. But before Vietnam, there was the Ford Motor Company.
McNamara was one of a group of young officers from the U.S. Army Air Force's Office of Statistical Control hired by 28 year old Henry Ford II in 1946 to help rescue the ailing automaker. The “Whiz Kids” helped install fiscal and process discipline at Ford, the management of which had become ever more ad hoc as aging founder Henry Ford's dementia grew more apparent. By 1948 McNamara had assumed the role of leader of the Whiz Kids, and was clearly on a trajectory to the top. By 1955, he was general manager of Ford Division.
Read Full Article »
