The Rebel Driving Ford

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The rich kid from Grosse Pointe, Mich., and the working-class Lebanese kid from Melbourne, Australia, have laid out an interesting blueprint for change and done some things that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. They have broken ranks with other U.S. automakers. Last summer, for instance, Nasser announced that fuel mileage for all Ford trucks would be increased 25%, or 5 m.p.g., by 2005 (it is now about 20.5), well ahead of the government mandate that the other big companies are following. And they have gone to great lengths to promote a corporate culture that, as Nasser says, "looks at itself every day through the eyes of the consumer."

At last year's annual meeting, Ford unveiled the company's first annual "corporate citizenship" report. Replete with self-criticisms of the company's reliance on huge, emissions-belching SUVs, the 98-page report drew a bewildering avalanche of press--from environmentalists who saw it as a triumph, and from hardened SUV and truck lovers who saw it as the pinnacle of hypocrisy. Was Ford just going to stop making the ground pounders that account for more than 50% of its revenues?

Ford's answer to that contradiction goes something like this: As long as customers want them, we will keep making SUVs, because if we don't, someone else will. We'll just keep making them cleaner and safer, and thus force every other auto company to do the same.

To understand that delicate and ambitious pursuit, you must enter the world of Bill and Jac--a relationship between two very different men half a generation apart. Simply speaking, Ford is the impassioned do-gooder, the green-tea-drinking fly-fisherman who has a hard time saying no to any worthy cause. Nasser is the corporate hardass who just as easily might have run the old, secretive Ford Motor and reveled in it. "When you look at how important openness has become for Ford [Motor], you have to remember that Bill has always been that way," says a longtime insider. "Jac supports it because he realizes it's good business."

From the minute they took office, rumors of discord between Jac and Bill have swept the hallways of headquarters in Dearborn, Mich. There has been talk of shouting matches between the rich brat and the corporate master. Nasser and Ford hate that and vehemently deny they have ever had a real falling out. "This company has always loved to form camps around its top players," says Ford. "We're trying to avoid that."

Their offices adjoin each other on the top floor of the company's green glass World Headquarters building, but one look at them gives away the stark differences between Ford and Nasser. Ford's is warm and wood paneled, plastered with pictures of his family and himself. Practically everything--except his grandfather Edsel's desk--is recyclable, and tropical fish swim in a tank on one wall.

Nasser's quarters are spartan, cool and movie-set corporate, his desk a black African-wengewood-and-brushed-chrome counter on a raised dais in front of a bank of computers and flat-screen televisions (all on, 24/7). He keeps his Blackberry communicator and a Nokia 8100 Worldphone at his fingertips, a slim purple Sony Vaio laptop at arm's reach.

One man is about deliberation, the other about speed. Nasser had to work hard and suffer the indignities of an immigrant growing up in Australia. A 30-year lifer who has run just about every Ford fief on the planet, he is a relentless taskmaster with a passion for machines, Savile Row suits and exquisite watches (he has 120 at last count). He lives the code of today's global corporate warrior, perpetually moving through time zones and making deals.

He was already moving when he took the CEO job, and within 18 months he acquired Volvo, Land Rover--and a divorce. Then he launched a complete corporate reorganization, in an everlasting quest to keep up Ford's rep as Detroit's best-run car company. "A lot of things came together," says Nasser. "We were a new generation in a new century and an incredible technological and communications revolution in which the consumers had the power. So it was time to make them the driving force."

By contrast, Ford is so devoted to his wife Lisa and their four kids that he's been dubbed Ford's No. 1 "soccer mom." Last year he moved to Ann Arbor, Mich., where he is building a modest (by billionaire standards) house to give his family a more normal existence than the legacy-ridden conclave of mansions in Grosse Pointe. His current vehicle of choice (he has a garageful, including a couple of juiced-up Mustangs): a chrome yellow Ford Escape, the company's new compact SUV.

Since Ford and Nasser took over, they have forced a markedly more humane agenda down through the company. They are spending $200 million for a program called the Model E, paying to put a computer in every employee's home. Last year the company announced plans to open 30 "family centers" at its U.S. locations, offering, among other services, free day care and adult education. Even the United Auto Workers have been impressed.