Out of the storm?

Head honchos at two of our four local manufacturers have announced they're moving on within weeks of each other.

Chris Gubbey, MD at Holden, is taking up a position with GM in Russia and his place will be taken by Mark Reuss.

Over at Broadmeadows, Tom Gorman, Ford Australia's President, announced his resignation from Ford after 20 years with the company, including the last four in Australia.

Gorman is not at liberty to say much about his future career path, but he will be based in London, employed by an Australian company.

It has been a roller-coaster ride for Gorman, taking on the role of FCAI President almost immediately upon commencement of his role with Ford in Australia, accepting a bundle of awards for Territory and Falcon within the first "six or nine months" -- and then watching sales of locally manufactured Ford products wane as the increased petrol prices and rapidly improving value of the Australian dollar hit home.

Gorman has enjoyed "a very close, cooperative relationship with the federal and the state governments" and describes his time in the FCAI presidency as "absolutely outstanding", giving him an opportunity to learn about the local industry at a "deeper level".

In some respects, the timing of his departure has been a well placed piece in the mosaic that is Ford Australia's recent history.

He had requested of his management at Ford to extend his tenure in Australia beyond the initial three years, foreseeing tough times ahead as sales of the Falcon declined.

There were also tough, strategic decisions that needed to be made, and a challenging restructure to initiate.

Granted his request to extend his stay in Australia, he has remained in the role just a few months short of the time in the top job that Geoff Polites served before him. Only Bill Dix has served longer than Gorman and Polites.

So now, his resignation has been announced just a matter of months ahead of the (overdue) decision-making time for his next move within Ford.

"Originally I was meant to stay for three years and then I extended with the agreement of my management last year, because we knew that there were so many issues to tackle in '07 and then, both from a personal and a professional standpoint, I wanted to lead the team through the difficult period -- and I think we've done that successfully.

"We built our business on the back of the Falcon, and the Falcon and the large car segment used to be 30 per cent of this industry and last year was less than 13 per cent -- and that's affected our business and it's affected our dealers. We've both been responding to it.

"We have a really good runout program in place, our stocks are tight actually, and we're in very good shape. We have great dealer support and I think we're in a really good position to launch Orion. "

Gorman tendered his resignation to his management at Ford prior to Christmas last year and has arranged it to allow Ford enough time to bring successor Bill Osborne (more here) up to speed with the local operation -- ahead of the Project Orion Falcon, now believed to be scheduled for an on-sale date around April (more here).

There has been some concern about the prospects for Ford within the local industry, but on balance, Gorman leaves the Aussie division relatively lean and optimistic.

Public concern centres on the sales of the locally built Falcon, but Gorman says: "The Falcon result last year; it isn't something that we would say is the shining light of the last four years, but in its runout year -- in a segment that is shrinking pretty radically -- we still did about what we expected to do."

"I think we're in great shape to launch the new one."

While there have also been other "challenges" (managementspeak for "problems") -- including the mediocre sales performance of Ford's small cars -- there were also some bright spots during his time in Australia.

As Gorman explained: "There are quite a few [highs], I think."

"Number one: the effort that we've gone to, building our engineering centre of excellence here is something that I'll always be incredibly proud of and it would be wrong for me to take all the credit for that.

"I think Trevor Worthington and his team have really -- by all the great product that they've launched -- shown that they deserve the business.

"Winning the 'T6' obviously, is huge for us.

"The Indian B car is a big part of our business now.

"And if you look at our product development 'factory', if you will, more than half the engineers are working on non-Falcon and Territory-related business, so we really are a major exporter of our intellectual capital.

"I'm very proud of that.

"I'm very proud of the fact that we've won the Focus opportunity, along with a great deal of government support. I'm really proud that we're going to be able to diversify our manufacturing base, albeit in a couple of years from now, but the building blocks are there and in place.

"I'm very proud of the fact that we stuck to our guns on Falcon. A lot of people would have said 'Why are you going down this path?', but Falcon is still critically important to us. We're going to put out a world class, rear-wheel drive family car, and that's just around the corner.

"I'm proud of the way we've treated all of our people. Nobody likes to make their company smaller, but we had to do that -- and I think we've done it very smoothly, in great cooperation with our unions.

"We treated our people with a great deal of respect."

Asked whether his perceptions of Ford Australia and the market generally had changed during his time in the role, Gorman said: "I'm very comfortable in the understanding of the market place."

"One of the things that really becomes very apparent to you as soon as you arrive, is the absolute amount of competition that exists in this marketplace.

"I mean, we're now a million-unit industry, but if you look at the number of competitors -- and on a per capita basis -- this is one of the most open markets in the world, and one of the most competitive markets.

"There are many marques here that we compete against, that you don't compete against, even in the North American market.

"All the European brands are here, all the Japanese brands are here -- and it is a wide open and very competitive market.

"I've grown to understand that and respect that."

To comment on this article click here