Another Ford Guy

My dad was a “Ford guy,” meaning that he would only buy Fords. Granted he never bought a new car, so perhaps you could say that he was a “used Ford guy.” Because we had only one car, when I was growing up, I drove only Fords … Fords with the gearshift right there by the steering wheel. The car that I remember the most was “the Blue Flash,” which was probably a 1956 Ford sedan.

Although I cannot recall ever having a bad Ford experience, for the last thirty years, I have been a Toyota guy. However, based upon what Ford’s CEO recently did, I may be a Ford guy from here on out.

As many of you might recall last spring after the Georgia legislature voted on and passed new voting laws, some companies just could not resist, and caved to “the woke.” Major League Baseball caved. Delta Airlines caved. Coca-Cola caved. My response to these “woke” cavers was not to subsidize their products. 

According to auto news site, Jalopnik, a contingent of black and white employees at Ford Motor Company recently penned a letter airing their grievances over the company’s relationship with numerous police departments in America — about two-thirds of police vehicles in the country are Fords.

In the letter, the employees argued that Ford, by building vehicles used by police, is actively sustaining racism and oppression in America. As a way to address this, they urged executives to discontinue all production of police vehicles.

In my mind if the CEOs of Delta, Coke, or MLB had been in charge at Ford, we would soon be seeing police driving around in Priuses or Chevy Volts. Fortunately, the CEO of Ford, Jim Hackett had the perfect response the group of virtue-signaling employees after he  caught wind of the letter, or at least its sentiment, and he subsequently addressed the issue in an office memo.

In the memo, he kindly but forcefully clapped back at the demands with logic and common sense. Here’s an example: “The issues plaguing police credibility have nothing to do with the vehicles they’re driving.” One would think such a notion would be obvious, but evidently it needed to be explained.”

PJMedia provided a shortened translation of the memo: “No. We’re not going to stop making police cars. Now get back to work.”

It’s refreshing to see common business sense prevail over “wokeness,” and hopefully we will see more CEOs standing up instead of fizzling like the CEOs of Delta, Coke, and MLB did.

1/24/22

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