Ford's CEO just announced the company has learned from its quality issues. Took them long enough. The automaker spent years churning out vehicles that needed immediate recalls, tanking earnings and destroying whatever was left of their reputation. But now they've cracked the code. They're targeting flawless launches.
Flawless. That's the word Jim Farley used. Not "better" or "improved" or "we'll try harder." Flawless. The bar for American automakers has fallen so low that building a car that doesn't immediately break counts as a milestone worth announcing to CNBC.
Imagine running a business where your big achievement is finally making the product work as advertised. That's like a restaurant CEO going on television to brag about serving food that won't give you salmonella. Congratulations on meeting the absolute minimum standard of your entire industry.
Retail traders saw this headline and immediately started buying F calls. They read "quality milestone" and assumed Ford had invented teleportation. These are the same people who think a company promising to fix its own f*ck-ups is bullish. They'll be holding those calls when the next recall hits in six months, wondering what went wrong.
Ford has been in business for over a century. They've had roughly one hundred and twenty years to figure out how to build a vehicle that doesn't fall apart. The fact that they're still "learning" from quality issues in 2024 is less a milestone and more a confession that they've been winging it this whole time.
Farley wants flawless launches. The market wants functional vehicles. Retail wants tendies. Only one of these groups is going to be disappointed, and it's the two that aren't Ford's CEO.
Photo by Dan Dennis on Unsplash
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