Sulu

I do not worship any executives, from any industry, including automakers. That said, I have respect for those honest men and women, people with integrity who are true, good leaders. Managing a large, successful business is not an individual pursuit but, rather, a team sport; and the successful auto executives must be willing to forgo ego, realise personal strengths and weaknesses, realise strengths of others, and work to ensure that everyone's strengths shine through for the betterment of the whole organisation.

I have respect for all good leaders, regardless of their star power in the media. I have more respect for leaders who do not seek out the limelight but rather work quietly to run the company they have been hired to manage.

I am of 2 minds on Alan Mulally. I respect him for realising the problems at Ford -- specifically that a car company needs good product to sell -- and then pulling Ford up by its bootstraps to overcome near death. But I am confused why it took an outsider (a senior executive not from the automotive industry) to do this. If senior American auto executives at the time were that bad, perhaps the Big 3 deserved to die.

I have respect for William Clay Ford Jr., for realising that he did not have the ability to run his family company on a daily basis as CEO, and for his willingness to hire not only from outside the company, but outside the industry.

I have little respect for blowhards, including Elon Musk. I agree he has vision but one individual's vision is not enough to run a product company as complex as an automaker. Automotive design and production is extremely complicated, and cannot be run by one person; Tesla would be a more successful company if its CEO let go of his ego, hired some extremely competent (and specialist) lieutenants and then let those lieutenants run their functions with minimal interference from the CEO.

MattyG

Musk isn't just a micro-manager, but has openly admitted that he's a nano-manager. He's notorious for openly verbally abusing employees because they didn't achieve his ideals. He's a binary: you're either a success or a failure in his world. Very much a feature of tech types from Silicon Valley.

Musk only qualifies for auto exec* with that asterisk. Because he was never in the auto business and he only got into it by ousting Martin Eberhard after many boardroom battles. Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning are the real founders of Tesla Motors. Musk only tossed his zillions into the company in 2007 and took over.

mmarshall

Musk may need a course in Basic Manners 101, but his big problem (and he seems to be not willing to admit it) is that the system of company-owned franchises he's bitten off is simply more than he can chew. Sure, he's given us some excellent full-electric vehicles (at a price), but the business model behind those vehicles is something that is clearly becoming unsustainable. No wholly company-owned and operated auto manufacturer has ever succeeded in the long run....it's just too much overhead. Tesla is not likely to be any different....though I will stand corrected if it turns out I'm wrong.

oldcajun

The top managers at Ford were invested in continuing to do things the old way to protect their own kingdoms. Alan came in with enough authority to demolish these kingdoms and demand major changes. A lot of old time managers left Ford and more dynamic leaders replaced them. Since he was an outsider, he had no long term relationships with the existing management.

evident

Wish we had a president that could be like this.

I have mixed feelings about Akio... I dunno if he's doing enough to get rid of Toyota and Lexus's imagine of boring vehicles. But maybe that's just because of the corporate environment he has to work in.

mmarshall

Newer, though, is not always better. Look, for example, at what happened when "forward"-thinking Ford managers decided to try and sell the Euro-market Ford Merkur XR4Ti and Scorpio here in the 1980s.....probably the biggest flop since the late-50s-Edsel.

MattyG

Another one in the best list and not a media hound: Dr. Ralf Speth. The guy who was on the lead wave of the German takeover of the British car industry. Current CEO of Jaguar Land Rover and another one of those quiet guys with an engineering doctorate and German car credentials all over the place. Anybody who owns a classic E Type Jag is a car guy at heart and that says a lot about vision and leadership. The F-Type is his baby.

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

mmarshall

Agreed that he is rather meek in his speech in public, but who knows what goes on behind the scenes?...that's where we have to rely on the word of those who actually have to deal with him under those conditions.

His main problem, at least from what I can see, is not so much a question of whether he can run a business or not, but of simply biting off more overhead than he can chew.

Aron9000

Somebody I personally hate more than any other exec is Carlos Ghosn. He turned Nissan into a **** ***, sloppily made, poor quality, appliance of transpiration value brand of cars that don't last. And this is somebody who lives 30 miles from Nissan headquarters and their huge factory near Nashville.

Nissan back in the 1980's/90's was high quality, took risks both in engineering and design, they made some rather iconic and great looking cars. If you ordered them with the basic engine, they ran forever(BTW most American models got the basic engines, all the cool turbo stuff was Japanese only). That was another flaw of Nissan though back in the 80's/90's, all the cool stuff stayed in Japan. No Cedrics and Glorias with their 10 different trim levels, awd, turbo V6, and rather "Brougham" styling that would appeal to the traditional Cadillac/Lincoln guy. No R32, R33, R34 Skylines, keep in mind this was a huge model range that included sedan, coupe and station wagon, with various 4 cylinder, inline six engines, inline six engines with turbos, AWD avaliable with all the engine options. Then there was the Silvia, we had lamely styled, and very lame under powered versions with, no joke, an engine from a pickup truck instead of some sort of high revving engine or the turbo model the Japanese had. I mean really, look at this sexyness we were denyed




Sorry but to get back on point . . . .

Ghosn sucks because he canceled all that fun Japanese only, RWD, turbocharged goodness. I'm convinced Nissan could have sold a lot more cars if they had brought over some of their great product from Japan as an Infiniti(I know all that fun JDM RWD turbo stuff wasn't cheap). Instead of inviting all that Japanese fun over to America, he gave us utterly contemptible crap like the 3rd gen Altima, the expensive to fix and unreliable CVT transmission, build quality went to the toilet under his reign. Yes Nissan was profitable, but I'd never own one of their cars post 2000, they build utterly contemptible ugly junk that only moves based on its price point and their willingness to finance subprime buyers.

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

of course all that stuff denied in the 80s/90s had nothing to do with ghosn who wasn't even involved.

according to wikipedia ghosn is also credited with saving nissan from about certain bankruptcy, so maybe your hatred is misplaced. he also saved renault. he's also overseen the renault-nissan (and mitsubishi and others) group taking it to the third largest automaker in the world. he also got nissan to do the leaf, which is the world's best selling electric car. not bad.

millions of people still consider nissans extremely reliable.

i'd say you're way off...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Ghosn

based on your prior posts, do you own any brand of car beyond 2000?

evident

I think Nissan was under serious financial trouble beofe Ghosn took over and brought them back to profitability. They did try to bring some JDM stuff over as infiniti products (G35 = Skyline, M3x=Fuga) but you're right it wasn't enough and there were many things they could have done better.

mmarshall

Consumer Reports still gives the Altima good reliability marks, but some other Nissan products have indeed suffered. In fact, there is a class action suit over some of the CVTs.

Sulu

You cannot compare Tesla and Elon Musk to Apple and Steve Jobs. Apple and Tesla are very different companies in very different industries so the management styles will be different.

Apple is a 4-decade old, well-established company with well-honed operating processes; it has strong managers running it (actually just ensuring that everyone is following the operating processes), in addition to its CEO. Tesla, on the other hand, is still a startup company (even after a decade-and-a-half), operating in chaos due to poor (or non-existent) operating processes; it needs -- but lacks -- strong managers to run the various major (and extremely important) functions, such as finance, management and oversight of sub-assembly suppliers, production of the battery (in the Gigafactory) and production of the car, to name only a few.

Apple is an electronics company that designs and markets individual computers for personal use; it subcontracts out the production of its computers to suppliers. Tesla is an automotive company. Its cars contain dozens of complex data-acquisition and control computers that must consistently communicate with each other. Its cars contain many, many, many more sub-assemblies -- the dozens of control computers and sensors, the seats (which, allegedly Tesla had problems with), the interior furnishings (dashboard, door panels, etc.), etc. -- than an electronics company. An automaker is a much more difficult company to manage than an electronics company and cannot be adequately run by one single person.

A car is a much more complicated product to design and build than individual computers. Apple pays suppliers to build its products, because it knows that there are suppliers out there that specialise in building electronics products, such that it is cheaper and easier for Apple to have someone else build its products. Tesla, however, despite working in an industry that has many, many specialised sub-assembly suppliers, stubbornly insists on building (or re-building) its sub-assemblies.

Experienced auto industry managers know how to select, and how to manage and oversee suppliers for best quality at the best price; Tesla needs these specialists, yet Elon Musk stubbornly insists on doing it all himself. Why must Elon Musk himself camp out at the Gigafactory to ensure that battery production is going as planned? He should have a trusted lieutenant on site to do that. Yet, Musk stubbornly insists on micro-managing.

I do not fault Musk for being the chief executive at more than one company. But I do fault Mr. Musk for failing to realise that he cannot do all of it (design the product, build the product, test the product, manage production) by himself.

I have had the misfortune of working for micro-managers (and have done that myself until it was pointed out to me that I was doing that). When a manager insists on taking on too many roles -- both production and management for example -- one function (or often all) suffers, to the detriment of the product; the result is a sub-standard (late to market and/or poor quality) product. We are seeing that with Tesla's cars.

As I said at the start, I have respect for auto industry executives who realise that managing an automaker is a team sport, and who are able to work with the best attributes from other managers to successfully manage the company. I have little respect for lone cowboys who think they can do it all themselves.

Speaking at formal functions such as interviews and shareholder meetings is quite different than speaking off the cuff; speaking formally often involves a pre-written script and rehearsal (or at least some thought beforehand of what should be said and how it should be said). Elon Must and President Trump are very similar in this regard: When Trump speaks formally and follows the script, he is logical and straigtforward, as Musk is; but when they tweet, they are speaking off the cuff and that is when their huge egos and disregard for everything else and everyone else is most evident.

Aron9000

As far as my favorite auto executive, its John DeLorean. Gave us the Pontiac GTO, which started the muscle car trend with big engines, wild styling and loud colors. Its kind of amazing that cars like the GTO Judge, the winged Mopar cars, the C3 Corvette with 454 cubic inches of V8, all that zany, crazy stuff came from some corporations with very conservative corporate culture. People like DeLorean made that happen, they lit a fire under the *** of some very conservative executives and proved that performance would sell.

As for Carlos Ghosn, yes he did rescue Nissan from bankruptcy, kind of in the same way Lee Iacoca rescued Chrysler in the early 1980's. If you look at Nissan's product line for the past 10 years or so and compare it to everything is a K-car Chrysler lineup of the 1980's, I see some real similarities. People bought K-cars left and right, but even at the time they weren't considered good cars. Same thing with current Nissans IMO, people buy them for some reason even though they aren't very good cars, so I guess Ghosn knows what people in that bottom of the barrel market want. Which is a low low price, which is the thing current Nissan does better than anything else.