Ford to Open Tokyo Office to Gain a Foothold in Asia

Ford Motor Co. Chairman Donald E. Petersen said Tuesday that Ford will station a vice president in Tokyo and open a “strategic organization” here to gain a foothold it now lacks in markets that he said are expected to provide 60% of global sales growth in the next 20 years.

Petersen told an audience at the Japan National Press Club that the appointment of W. Wayne Booker to head the new Ford Asia-Pacific office represents the first time that Ford has stationed one of its officers in Tokyo.

Petersen said Booker and the new office would coordinate existing Ford operations in Japan, Australia, Taiwan, New Zealand and South Korea and “establish a presence in (other) nations where we do not have a strong presence today.”

Many of the countries in which Ford lacks a significant foothold and that are expected to provide the bulk of automotive growth are in Asia, he said.

“This is something that we simply must take on as a strategic issue,” Petersen said, adding that the company intends to build its new Asian organization into one “that, in time, will be as important as our European and North American operations are today.”

He said Ford is about to introduce the Thunderbird as its fourth model sold here. The others are the Lincoln Continental, the Taurus and the Probe. Last year, when the Taurus was the only Ford product sold here, Ford exported a mere 642 vehicles to Japan, compared to 27,947 for Volkswagen, the No. 1 import.