# Ford: how One Ford avoided a bailout by borrowing early and selling brands

Source: https://sarang.pro/ford-one-ford/
Author: Sarang | Published: 7 October 2026

## The situation

On 5 September 2006 Ford Motor Company named Alan Mulally, the 61-year-old head of Boeing's commercial aircraft business, as its next chief executive. He took over on 1 October from Bill Ford, the founder's great-grandson, who stayed on as chairman. No carmaker had hired a chief executive from outside the car industry in more than half a century, according to contemporary reports, and the choice said a good deal about how worried the family and the board had become.

Within three months Mulally had to settle a question that would decide whether Ford survived the next downturn on its own terms: should the company borrow an enormous sum immediately, pledging almost everything it owned, or try to fund its restructuring from the cash it already held? A few months later came a second question, about which of Ford's many brands it could afford to keep. And in late 2008, when the financial crisis pushed General Motors and Chrysler towards federal rescue, he faced a third: whether Ford should ask taxpayers for money too.

The scale of the problem was clear by January 2007, when Ford reported a net loss of $12.7bn for 2006. It was the largest annual loss in the company's 103-year history, well above the $7.4bn it lost in 1992 (a figure swollen by an accounting change). About $9.9bn of the 2006 loss came from after-tax charges for staff buyouts and plant closures. Excluding those items Ford still lost $2.8bn, against a profit of $1.9bn on the same basis in 2005. Lower volumes cost it $3.3bn and lower prices a further $1.9bn. Ford later restated the 2006 loss as $12.6bn, so both figures appear in the record.

Some of the damage was structural. Ford spent $3.1bn on health care for US employees and retirees in 2006, roughly $1,200 for every vehicle it built. Its share of the US market had fallen for eleven years in a row, from about 25% in 1998 to under 18% in 2005, and in the fourth quarter of 2006 it fell behind Toyota in US market share. Even the F-Series pickup, the best-selling vehicle in the country and Ford's most important source of profit, sold more than 100,000 fewer units in 2006 than a year earlier.

## Background

Henry Ford founded the company in 1903, and members of his family have sat at the top of it ever since. For most of the twentieth century Ford was the second of Detroit's "Big Three", behind General Motors and ahead of Chrysler. It made money mainly by selling cars and trucks in North America through franchised dealers, and by lending money to the people who bought them through its finance arm, Ford Motor Credit.

By the early 2000s the North American profit engine depended heavily on large pickups and sport utility vehicles. These carried high margins while petrol was cheap. Passenger cars, where Japanese makers had stronger products and lower costs, made little or nothing. Ford's labour contracts with the United Auto Workers union committed it to generous wages, pensions and retiree health care, and to a jobs bank that paid laid-off workers. Those commitments were fixed, while sales were not.

In the late 1980s and 1990s Ford also bought a set of European premium brands. It paid $2.5bn for Jaguar in 1989, $6.45bn for Volvo Cars in 1999 and $2.7bn for Land Rover in 2000, and took control of Aston Martin. It raised its stake in Mazda to a controlling position in 1996, having first invested in 1979. These brands were grouped under a Premier Automotive Group. The idea was to capture the higher margins of luxury cars and to share engineering across a global portfolio. In practice each brand needed its own investment, and Jaguar in particular lost money for years.

Ford's first response to the crisis came before Mulally arrived. In January 2006 Bill Ford and Mark Fields, then head of the Americas, announced a plan later known as "The Way Forward". It would cut 25,000 to 30,000 jobs in North America by 2012 and close 14 plants, removing about 1.2 million vehicles of annual capacity and leaving roughly 3.4 million. Fields said running plants at about 75% of capacity, as Ford had in 2005, was "clearly unsustainable". Bill Ford put the cultural point bluntly: the old attitude of building vehicles and expecting customers to buy them was, in his words, "business as usual and it's wrong." By the autumn the plan had been accelerated and widened, but Ford's losses were growing faster than the cuts.

## The industry

The US light-vehicle market was large, mature and cyclical. Americans bought 16.5 million new cars and light trucks in 2006, down 2.6% from just under 17 million in 2005. General Motors led with 24.3% of the market. Ford was second with about 16.4%, Toyota third with 15.4% and rising, and the Chrysler group of DaimlerChrysler fourth. The three Detroit companies together held about 54% of sales and were losing share every year; Asian brands held about 39% and were gaining.

Exhibit 1: US light-vehicle sales by company, 2006

Company2006 unitsChange on 2005Share of market

General Motors4,028,992-8.8%24.3%
Ford Motor2,716,383-8.0%16.4%
Toyota (incl. Lexus, Scion)2,542,525+12.5%15.4%
Chrysler group2,142,505-7.0%12.9%
Honda (incl. Acura)1,509,358+3.2%9.1%
Nissan (incl. Infiniti)1,019,249-5.3%6.2%
Industry total16,548,259-2.6%100%

Unit figures from Morgan & Company data reported by MH&L; shares as reported by Autodata via NBC News. The two sources count Ford slightly differently (NBC gives about 2.9 million including some premium brands), but both put Ford's share at 16.4%.

The forces acting on the Detroit companies in 2006 were unusually hostile. Rivalry was intense and growing, because Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Hyundai had built plants in the American South with younger, non-union workforces and no legacy pension or health costs. Buyers had more choice than ever and could compare prices online, which pushed carmakers into heavy discounting. Suppliers were weak rather than powerful, since many were in financial trouble themselves. That weakness was a risk in its own right, since Ford, GM and Chrysler shared a large part of the same supplier base, and the collapse of one carmaker could take down suppliers that the others needed. Threat of entry into full-line mass production was low because of the capital involved, but the Japanese and Korean transplants were in effect new entrants to American manufacturing. Substitutes mattered less in the short run than a shift within the product range: as petrol prices rose after 2005, buyers moved from large SUVs towards cars and crossovers, which was exactly where Ford was weakest.

Regulation pulled in the same direction. Federal fuel-economy rules were set to tighten, which would force investment in smaller and more efficient vehicles. And the cost structure of the industry left Detroit carrying fixed obligations that its foreign competitors did not have. In that setting the key strategic variable for Ford was not market share in any one year. It was whether it had enough cash to keep investing in new products through the next downturn without being forced into bankruptcy.

## The decision

Mulally faced three linked choices in his first two years. People inside and outside the company argued about each of them at the time.

### Borrow now, or rely on existing cash

Ford had $23.6bn of cash at the end of September 2006. Before any new borrowing it expected that to fall to about $20bn by the end of the year, with $6bn of credit lines and a $3bn trust for retiree benefits on top. Analysts expected the company to burn between $5bn and $14bn of cash in 2007 alone. One option was to manage with what it had, cut costs harder and hope that the market held up long enough for new models to arrive.

The alternative was to borrow on a scale no carmaker had attempted, while banks were still lending freely. The catch was that Ford's credit rating was already below investment grade, so lenders would want security. The company would have to pledge its factories, its shares in Ford Credit and Volvo, and its intellectual property, including the blue oval badge and the F-150 and Mustang names. If the restructuring failed, secured lenders would stand first in line and could end up owning the core of the business. Moody's analyst Bruce Clark warned that the security package hurt unsecured creditors, and both Moody's and Standard & Poor's cut the ratings on some existing Ford debt. Robert Barry of Goldman Sachs called the deal a "modest net negative" for shareholders because the added debt made the equity riskier. Others saw no real choice. "The alternative was bankruptcy," said David Healy.

### Keep the premium brands, or sell them

Jaguar, Land Rover, Volvo and Aston Martin brought prestige, loyal customers and a presence in the luxury segment, where margins were higher. Land Rover and Volvo had loyal followings. Selling them would shrink Ford's revenue and give up years of investment. But each brand needed money for new models at the same moment that the Ford brand itself was short of cash, and the cost of running several separate engineering and marketing operations was high. Selling in a weak market would also mean accepting less than Ford had paid. John Wolkonowicz of Global Insight later described Jaguar as a "money pit" and noted that Ford had spent almost 20 years trying to make it work.

### Take government money in 2008, or stay out

By late 2008 the US market was collapsing and credit markets had frozen. GM and Chrysler asked Congress for emergency loans. Ford had to decide whether to join them. Taking federal money would add a safety net, but it would come with conditions on pay, dividends and management, and it would place Ford in the same category as competitors that were heading towards bankruptcy. Refusing it meant relying on the cash raised two years earlier, in a market that could still get worse. There was also a complication: Ford needed GM and Chrysler to survive. In his testimony to the Senate Banking Committee on 4 December 2008, Mulally said about 80% of Ford's supplier network overlapped with theirs, and nearly a quarter of Ford's top dealers also held GM or Chrysler franchises.

## What they did

### The financing

Ford announced the borrowing in late November 2006 and completed it in December. Mulally later told the Senate that the company raised $23.5bn in liquidity: $18.5bn of senior secured debt and credit facilities, secured on substantially all of Ford's domestic assets, and $5bn of unsecured convertible notes. Contemporary reports described the secured part as roughly an $8bn five-year revolving credit line, a term loan of about $7bn and around $3bn of other borrowing. The collateral included Ford's plants, its shares in Ford Credit and Volvo, and its trademarks. Mulally called it "the world's largest home improvement loan", according to Time. With the new money Ford expected to have about $38bn of cash and available funds by the end of 2006.

### Cost cutting

Ford offered buyout or early retirement packages to all 75,000 of its US hourly workers in 2006, and more than half accepted. By the end of 2006 its North American salaried staff had fallen to 37,700 and its hourly workforce to 77,900. It planned to remove 18,000 to 23,000 hourly jobs and 9,000 salaried jobs by 2008. By December 2008 Mulally could tell Congress that Ford had cut about 12,000 salaried and 44,000 hourly employees, closed 17 plants with more closures to come, reduced its US dealers by 606 since 2005 to about 3,790, and cut the number of production suppliers eligible for major contracts from 3,400 in 2004 to about 1,600. North American operating costs were set to fall by more than $5bn between the end of 2005 and 2008. Retiree health care for UAW members was later moved off Ford's books into an independent trust, a transfer completed in 2009.

### Selling the brands

The disposals came one after another, and each was presented as a way to raise cash and concentrate on the Ford brand.

Exhibit 2: Ford's brand disposals, 2007 to 2010

BrandBought by FordSold toAnnounced or completedPrice received

Aston MartinControl acquired in the late 1980sConsortium led by David Richards of Prodrive with Kuwaiti investorsAnnounced 12 March 2007£479m ($925m); Ford kept a £40m stake
Jaguar and Land Rover1989 ($2.5bn) and 2000 ($2.7bn)Tata MotorsAnnounced 26 March 2008About $2.3bn in cash; Ford to pay up to about $600m into JLR pension plans
Mazda (20% of shares)Stake from 1979, control from 1996Mazda and about 20 of its business partnersAnnounced 19 November 2008About $538m; Ford kept about 13%
Volvo Cars1999 ($6.45bn)Zhejiang GeelyCompleted 2 August 2010$1.8bn, of which $1.3bn cash at closing and a $200m note, with price adjustments to follow

Sources: Ford press releases filed with the SEC (Aston Martin, Jaguar Land Rover), ABC News/USA Today (Mazda), Manufacturing.net (Volvo), IndustryWeek and NPR (original purchase prices).

In total Ford received far less for these brands than it had paid. Mulally's testimony put the cash raised from asset sales at $3.7bn by December 2008, before Volvo. On the Jaguar Land Rover sale he said the brands were leaving Ford "with the products, plan and team to continue to thrive". Ford also wound down Mercury, ending production in the fourth quarter of 2010, which left Ford and Lincoln as its only brands.

### One Ford

The organising idea behind the turnaround was "One Ford": running the company as a single global business rather than a federation of regional ones. In practice this meant shared vehicle platforms, a single product plan, and regional heads working as one team. Jim Farley, who joined from Toyota in 2007 to run global marketing, said in January 2012 that the most important part of One Ford was "the matrix organization and how we work as a team". The company aimed to build about 85% of its global range on nine platforms by 2013. The old Focus had been sold with more than 20 separate advertising campaigns around the world; the new Focus launched in 2011 with one global campaign, which Farley said cut its total marketing budget by 10%.

Mulally also changed how the senior team worked. He held a weekly business plan review every Thursday morning in which about 15 top executives reported on their areas using charts coloured green, yellow or red. According to accounts published later, the first weeks produced nothing but green charts while the company was losing billions. The pattern broke when Mark Fields showed a red chart about a serious problem with one of his new vehicles and asked colleagues for help. About two weeks later the other executives were reporting problems openly too. Analyst Rebecca Lindland said it was "the smartest thing he ever could have done".

### Staying out of the bailout

Ford's results showed how close the margin was. It lost $14.6bn in 2008, another record, and burned $7.7bn of cash in the third quarter and $5.5bn in the fourth. It ended the year with $13.4bn of automotive cash. In January 2009 it drew the remaining $10.1bn of its secured credit line, which Mulally said was a response to "the growing instability of the capital markets", not a sign that it needed the money for operations.

When the Detroit chief executives went to Congress in December 2008, Ford's business plan asked for access to a $9bn government credit line only as a standby. Mulally told the Senate that "Ford does not require access to a government bridge loan" in the near term and that it did not expect a liquidity crisis in 2009, unless a domestic competitor went bankrupt or the downturn deepened. He said he would work for $1 a year if Ford ever drew on government loans. Ford never did. The Automotive Industry Financing Program eventually provided $79.69bn to GM, its finance arm GMAC and Chrysler. Chrysler filed for bankruptcy in April 2009 and GM on 1 June 2009, with liabilities of about $185bn and the US government taking a 60% stake.

Ford did receive other federal support. In June 2009 the Department of Energy announced a $5.9bn loan under an advanced-vehicle programme to retool plants in Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri and Ohio for 13 more fuel-efficient models. Ford had lobbied for that programme and for the "cash for clunkers" scheme, under which more than 90,000 Fords were sold.

## What happened

US light-vehicle sales fell by about 21% in 2009 to roughly 10.4 million, the lowest level since 1982. Ford's sales fell by about 15%, against about 30% at GM and 36% at Chrysler, and Ford gained US market share for the first time since 1995. Its combined share rose by 1.1 points to 15.3%. It returned to a net profit of $2.7bn in 2009, its first annual profit in four years. In 2009 it also cut its debt sharply, booking $4.7bn of gains from debt reduction and transferring UAW retiree health obligations to the independent trust.

Exhibit 3: Ford Motor Company key figures, 2006 to 2011

YearRevenue ($bn)Net income ($bn)Pre-tax result excl. special items ($bn)Automotive gross cash at year end ($bn)US market share

2006160.1-12.6 (first reported as -12.7)-3.1533.916.4%
2007172.5-2.7+0.1334.6n/a
2008138.1 (restated)-14.8 (first reported as -14.6)-6.8513.414.2% (implied)
2009118.3+2.7+0.4525.515.3%
2010120.9+6.6+8.320.5n/a
2011136.3+20.2 (incl. $12.4bn tax benefit)+8.822.916.5%

Sources: Ford full-year results releases for 2007, 2009, 2010 and 2011 (SEC filings and Ford media site); CNN Money for 2006; NBC News for the originally reported 2008 loss. The 2008 share is implied by Ford's statement that 2009 share of 15.3% was up 1.1 points. Year-end 2006 cash is derived from the 2007 release ($34.6bn, up $0.7bn). Ford restated some earlier figures after accounting changes, so the 2008 revenue and loss differ from the figures first published in January 2009.

Debt fell quickly once profits returned. Automotive debt stood at $34.3bn at the end of 2009. Ford cut it by $14.5bn, or 43%, during 2010 to $19.1bn, and by a further $6bn in 2011 to $13.1bn, at which point its automotive cash exceeded its debt by $9.8bn. Its 2011 results included a one-off $12.4bn tax gain from releasing a valuation allowance against deferred tax assets, which is why net income jumped to $20.2bn while pre-tax operating profit rose only modestly to $8.8bn. That year Ford paid profit-sharing of about $6,200 to each of roughly 41,600 eligible US hourly workers.

The share price followed. Ford's stock fell to $1.26 on 19 November 2008 (Time later described the low as "about $2"). By late January 2011 it had reached $18.79, a nine-year high. In 2012 Fitch and then Moody's raised Ford's credit rating back to investment grade. Under the terms of the 2006 loans, that released the collateral: the blue oval, the Mustang and F-150 trademarks, the headquarters and the plants. "We pledged our heritage," Bill Ford said at the time, explaining what the badge had meant to the family.

The decision to stay out of the bailout also had a commercial effect. Ford could tell customers it had not taken federal rescue money, and it did so. From 1 September 2011 it ran a national television advertisement in which a customer said he did not want a car "bailed out by our government".

## Other views

The turnaround was widely praised, but critics raised several points that a fair reading has to weigh.

The first concerns the bailout itself. FactCheck.org examined Ford's 2011 advertisement and concluded that "Ford once supported a bailout program that it now denigrates." Mulally had testified that the collapse of GM or Chrysler would threaten Ford through shared suppliers and dealers, and Ford's own spokeswoman said the rescue of its competitors "was good for the industry and the nation's economy". On this reading Ford was a free rider: it benefited from a rescue it did not have to join, and from federal programmes such as the energy loan and cash for clunkers. Ford's answer was that the energy loan was available to every carmaker and was not emergency aid, and that it had arranged its own financing years earlier at considerable risk.

The second concerns timing and luck. Ford borrowed in late 2006, near the peak of easy credit. Had Mulally arrived a year later, the same deal would almost certainly have been impossible. Some observers therefore give much of the credit to the board's decision to bring in an outsider when it did, and to the momentum of the restructuring that Bill Ford and Mark Fields had begun in January 2006, before Mulally arrived.

The third concerns the price of the brand sales. Ford paid about $11.65bn for Jaguar, Land Rover and Volvo and received about $4.1bn for them, before pension contributions. Both buyers then did well with what they bought. Jaguar Land Rover under Tata reported revenue of £29.0bn and pre-tax profit before exceptional items of £2.5bn in the year to March 2025. A sceptic could argue that Ford sold good assets at the bottom of the market. The counter-argument is that the brands were worth more to owners who could fund them, and that Ford in 2008 could not.

The fourth concerns how far One Ford went. Global platforms suited Ford's small and mid-sized cars, but Europe remained difficult. In October 2012 Ford said it expected to lose more than $1.5bn in Europe that year and about $3bn over two years, and announced the closure of its Genk plant in Belgium and its van plant in Southampton, along with a stamping operation at Dagenham, ending vehicle manufacturing in Britain. One Ford had not solved the problem of excess capacity in a weak regional market.

Finally, unsecured creditors and shareholders bore real costs. The 2006 deal pushed unsecured bondholders down the queue, and the 2009 debt exchanges that produced Ford's $4.7bn of gains did so partly by buying back debt at a discount. Shareholders were diluted when Ford issued new equity and convertible notes during the crisis.

## Reading it through a framework

### Bartlett and Ghoshal's integration and responsiveness grid

Christopher Bartlett and Sumantra Ghoshal classified international companies by two pressures: the pressure to integrate activities globally for efficiency, and the pressure to respond to local differences in markets. A multidomestic company answers local needs with largely separate national or regional businesses. A global company integrates for scale and sells largely standard products. An international company transfers capabilities from the home base. A transnational company tries to achieve integration and local responsiveness at the same time.

Before 2006 Ford behaved in most respects like a multidomestic company. Ford of Europe and Ford North America developed different cars for their own markets, and the premium brands ran their own engineering. The more than 20 campaigns for the old Focus are a small but telling example. One Ford pushed the company firmly towards the global quadrant: nine platforms carrying about 85% of the range, one product plan, and one global launch campaign. The economics are straightforward. A platform such as Ford's B platform, which by 2012 carried more than 2 million vehicles a year, spreads engineering and tooling costs over far more units than any single regional model could.

The grid also shows the risk. Car markets differ in taste, regulation and price levels, and a company that integrates too far can lose ground in markets where local preferences matter. Ford's European losses in 2012 suggest that integration cut costs but did not by itself win customers in a crowded regional market with too many factories. The F-Series, which has always been engineered for North America, remained Ford's largest source of profit throughout. In practice One Ford was closer to a transnational model than its slogan suggested: global where scale paid, regional where it did not.

### Portfolio analysis with the BCG growth-share matrix

The Boston Consulting Group matrix sorts a company's businesses by the growth of their markets and their share relative to the leader. Cash cows (high share, low growth) fund question marks (low share, high growth) and stars; dogs (low share, low growth) are candidates for sale.

In 2006 Ford's North American truck business, led by the F-Series, was its cash cow, even though volumes were falling. The premium brands are harder to place. The luxury segment was growing faster than the mass market, but Jaguar's share was small against BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Lexus, which made it a question mark at best and arguably a dog. Volvo and Land Rover had stronger positions within their niches but needed heavy investment for new models. The matrix's logic is that a company short of cash should stop feeding businesses that cannot reach a leading position and concentrate on the core. Mulally's sales follow that logic closely: they raised about $3.7bn by the end of 2008 and $1.8bn more from Volvo in 2010, and removed claims on capital and engineering time.

The matrix has a well-known weakness that this case brings out. It treats each business as a stand-alone unit and ignores who else might own it. Jaguar Land Rover and Volvo were not inherently poor businesses; they were poor fits for an owner in Ford's position in 2008. Tata and Geely, with access to capital and different strategic aims, could fund them. The matrix explains why Ford sold. It does not tell you whether Ford sold at the right price or the right time.

## Since then

Mulally retired in 2014 and was succeeded by Mark Fields. Ford earned a record pre-tax profit in 2015, but its share price fell by about $7 between July 2014 and May 2017, and profits declined in early 2017. In May 2017 the board replaced Fields with Jim Hackett, the former head of the office furniture maker Steelcase. Jim Farley, the marketing chief who had helped run One Ford, became chief executive in 2020.

Under Farley Ford split itself into three operating units: Ford Blue for petrol and hybrid vehicles, Ford Model e for electric vehicles and software, and Ford Pro for commercial customers. In 2025 the company reported record revenue of $187.3bn but a net loss of $8.2bn, after $17.4bn of special charges, most of them tied to its electric vehicle programme. Ford Pro earned $6.8bn of operating profit and Ford Blue $3.0bn, while Model e lost $4.8bn. In December 2025 Ford said it no longer saw a path to long-term profitability for its EV business as planned, ended production of the current F-150 Lightning, cancelled three planned electric models, and agreed to unwind its BlueOval SK battery venture with SK On. It estimated total charges from these steps at about $19.5bn, spread across 2025 to 2027.

The most recent results available at the time of writing, for the second quarter of 2026, showed revenue of $48.3bn, a net loss of $1.3bn after a $3.6bn charge related to the battery venture, and adjusted operating profit of $2.5bn. Ford raised its full-year 2026 guidance for adjusted operating profit to between $10bn and $11bn. Model e was still expected to lose about $4bn in 2026.

The brands Ford sold have had mixed fortunes since. Jaguar Land Rover became the most profitable part of Tata Motors, with record pre-tax profits in the year to March 2025 driven by Range Rover and Defender. Volvo Cars has stayed under Geely's control. Ford has not returned to the luxury segment beyond Lincoln.

## What to take from it

- Raising money before a crisis, while lenders are still willing, can give a company choices that its rivals lose once credit markets close, but it only works if the plan the money pays for is carried out.

- Pledging core assets as collateral is a serious bet, and Ford's case shows both sides of it: the money kept the company out of bankruptcy, yet it ranked unsecured creditors lower and would have handed the business to lenders had the plan failed.

- Selling well-known brands can be the right move when they compete with the core business for scarce money and engineering time, even if the sale prices look poor and the buyers later do well.

- Global platforms can cut costs sharply, but they do not remove the need to deal with excess capacity and local competition in each region.

- Staying out of a public rescue can strengthen a brand's reputation, though a company that benefits from the rescue of its suppliers and competitors should be careful about how loudly it claims independence.

## Questions to think about

- Ford burned $13.2bn of cash in the second half of 2008 and ended the year with $13.4bn of automotive cash plus a $10.1bn credit line it then drew down. Using these figures, estimate how many more quarters Ford could have survived at the late-2008 burn rate without the 2006 financing. What does your answer imply about the decision Mulally made in his first three months?

- Ford paid about $11.65bn for Jaguar, Land Rover and Volvo and received about $4.1bn for them. Was it right to sell during a downturn, or should it have held on for better prices? What information would you need to answer properly?

- Mulally told Congress that 80% of Ford's suppliers overlapped with GM's and Chrysler's. Given that, was Ford's claim that it did not need a bailout fair to the taxpayers who funded its competitors' rescue?

- Ford's 2011 net income of $20.2bn included a $12.4bn tax benefit. Which measure, net income or pre-tax operating profit, gives a better picture of how far the turnaround had come, and why?

- Apply the integration and responsiveness grid to Ford in 2025. Does its split into Ford Blue, Ford Model e and Ford Pro move it towards or away from the One Ford model?

- How much of Ford's survival should be credited to Mulally personally, and how much to the board's timing, the Way Forward plan he inherited and the state of credit markets in late 2006?

## Concepts at work

Integration and responsiveness, Portfolio rationalisation, Turnaround financing. Explore them in [Insights](/insights/).

## Further reading

Oxford University Press covers this story as a teaching case in *Cases in International Business* on Oxford Business Trove. The sources below are the public record this page was written from.

*Written from the public sources listed below. Figures are as those sources report them.*