Off to the Races

Amid the full-throated roar of straining engines and the squeals of hot rubber biting into turns, a 1963 Ford Galaxie blazed across the finish line last week to win the Atlanta "500" stock car race. Ford also had entries in last week's Sebring twelve-hour endurance race in Florida, will have aluminum Ford engines powering two racers in the Indianapolis "500" Memorial Day. In fact, Ford is racing all over these days, openly defying both its critics and a six-year-old industry pledge against racing or ballyhooing of speed and horsepower in order to sell cars. Says Ford Division Boss Lee lacocca: "We are going to continue to enter all kinds of competition to improve the breed."

Ford is racing to improve its sales as much as the breed. Despite record industry sales, only Ford's Galaxie and Mercury Monterey have bettered their 1962 performance thus far in 1963. While General Motors' share of the auto market has steadily risen, Ford's share has slipped from 30% to 24% in two years. G.M. has cleverly helped to build its sales on the racing victories of Pontiacs and Chevrolets entered by dealers or private drivers. Until recently. Ford held back; now it intends to fight G.M. on the track, hoping that victories will spur its sales.

Still Awed. Oddly enough, Ford's problems come at a time when its dollar sales and profits are at records and its quality control is the best in its history. Yet, suggests a Chrysler executive uncharitably, "somehow the entire Ford line for the past few years has lacked sparkle." While such Ford styling features as the squared roof have set the trend for the rest of the industry, Ford stylists have failed to hold their lead. In Detroit, it is said that both Ford's profit success and its current selling troubles hark back to decisions taken by Robert S. McNamara, Ford's decisive president before he became Defense Secretary. Ford executives are still awed by the memory of McNamara. "He is the only true genius I've ever known," says one. But he adds: "His refusal to consider that the consumer would respond emotionally, rather than rationally, has resulted in our weakness today."

With his heavy reliance on computers to cut costs and to show the direction a product should take, McNamara made Ford into a case study of the possibilities and the limits of electronics logic. He and his staff were right when they predicted a big market for the four-passenger Thunderbird. They were dead wrong when they helped the cost cutters overrule Ford auto men who felt that the public would soon get tired of the same styling of such Ford makes as the Falcon, Comet, and Thunderbird, none of which has been drastically changed in three or four years, while the rest of the industry has moved ahead with restyled models. Consumer research dictated that Ford concentrate on econ omy features in its models; but G.M., with a more intuitive feeling for the shifting desires and quirks of motorists, had the field almost to itself when the public began demanding sleeker convertibles and pizazz features.

Shift & Run. Fortunately for Ford, McNamara's methods also left it operating at peak efficiency and able to move quickly to correct its products' weaknesses. Racing is designed to bring the speed worshipers back to Ford; the 1964 T-Birds, Falcons and Comets will boast drastic styling changes to attract lovers of change. Both the Ford and Lincoln-Mercury divisions are paying dealers rebates of from $75 to $165 per car for every sale over set quotas. "We're almost through shifting gears," says a top Ford official. "We're going to give G.M. a run for its money."

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