Is Ford running on empty?

In the executive dining room, the last of its kind at Detroit8217;s big automakers, waitresses take orders from a multicourse menu and bring silver finger bowls between the main course and dessert. Many of the Glass House8217;s walls, as well as the wood-paneled and softly lit lobby of the company8217;s design center, feature portraits of Ford8217;s ancestors, like his legendary great-grandfather Henry Ford, his grandfather Edsel Ford and his father, William Clay Ford Sr.

The answer to whether Ford8217;s portrait will hang among them one day, and whether there will eventually even be a headquarters where such portraits can hang, now rests in his hands. He could either be the Ford that resurrects one of the biggest companies on earth, or perhaps become the last Ford to run it. Few are more aware of this than Ford himself, who, at 49, holds a daunting trio of jobs, as chairman, chief executive and, since earlier this month, chair of its executive operating committee, making him Ford8217;s de facto chief operating officer, too.

8216;8216;There8217;s nobody that has more at stake in this company than I do,8217;8217; he said in a recent interview here. 8216;8216;Not just financially, but emotionally, and historically and everything else.8217;8217;

Ford8217;s challenges are extraordinary. His company reported losses of 1.6 billion in North America last year and lost 1.2 billion worldwide in the first quarter this year. On Thursday, Ford halved its quarterly dividend to a nickel to preserve cash, and analysts expect the company to report tepid second-quarter earnings this week. Many are already forecasting a third-quarter loss. With analysts speculating that the dividend cut means that Ford8217;s fortunes are worsening, Ford issued a statement noting that 8216;8216;the headwinds we faced at the beginning of 2006 have only become stronger.8217;8217;

As Ford tries to stem a slide that has taken his company from 25 per cent of the American market in 2000 to about 18 per cent now, he must preserve his family8217;s legacy, fight off Asian automakers8217; ferocious assault on Detroit and somehow realize his ambition, as yet unfulfilled, to make Ford the environmental leader among American auto companies.

When he started, his widely held image was that of a reluctant executive who would rather be practicing yoga, fly fishing or travelling somewhere with his wife and four children than be corralled in his corner office.

Now, as he juggles an even more burdensome troika of job titles and responsibilities, Ford says he is energised in a way that he was not during his first years as chief executive.

But while Ford has partially streamlined Ford8217;s bureaucracy and become its public face during his tenure, some of his instincts have not born fruit. A devoted environmentalist, he still bowed early on to wishes of Ford8217;s entrenched middle managers and senior executives who wanted the company to keep churning out very profitable but gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks during a period when oil prices were dirt cheap.

Had Ford produced more fuel-efficient vehicles like hybrids sooner, he not only would have found his company keeping pace with nimble foreign competitors like Toyota when oil prices spiked, but he also would have been able to illustrate the bottom-line merit of his environmental values. Instead, Ford, is again in the all-too-familiar spot of playing corporate catch-up.

As the entire American auto industry comes to grips with challenges that threaten to eclipse its dominance at home and abroad, and as uncertainties about Ford8217;s future stir anxieties within his family, Ford asserts that he and his company are responding to the shifts that are shaking the foundations of his business.