Ford Luxury Division Chief Stepping Down
As part of its sweeping restructuring plan, Ford Motor Co. said Friday that the head of its luxury auto division was stepping down and that it would move the California-based Lincoln brand out of its Premier Automotive Group.
Wolfgang Reitzle, a highflying auto executive recruited from BMW in 1999, is leaving to become chief executive of Linde, a German industrial firm. Reitzle will remain for an unspecified time as a consultant to Ford on product, design and marketing issues.
He will be succeeded by Mark Fields, president of Mazda Motor Corp. Fields, 41, is considered a Ford whiz kid who was named head of Mazda when he was 38.
Reitzle steps down as Ford’s luxury czar only three months after the auto maker announced its wide-ranging recovery plan that included having the PAG brands--Lincoln, Jaguar, Volvo, Land Rover and Aston Martin--grow aggressively and account for 35% of Ford’s profit by mid-decade.
Reitzle’s exit is “a disappointing development, given the credibility he brought to the company’s luxury effort,” Merrill Lynch auto industry analyst John Casesa said.
Chief Operating Officer Nick Scheele said Ford’s luxury brands still would deliver their planned profits. Lincoln and the Mercury brand, which make up the Lincoln Mercury division, are being merged into Ford’s North American operations to gain manufacturing and marketing efficiencies, Scheele said. Fields will direct PAG from London.
“Lincoln was a little bit of an orphan with the other products in PAG and has more of a tie with the Ford brand,” said David Cole, director of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich.
There was never any consideration to moving the Irvine-based PAG staff to London, Scheele said. “This is their biggest market, and California is as good a place as any, if not better. It’s a hugely growing demographic area, it represents automotive buying habits, and you see the competition close-up.”
Rumors had circulated for weeks in Detroit that Reitzle had a falling-out with management.
“Wolfgang has, and continues to have, strong feelings for Ford,” Chief Executive William Clay Ford Jr. said. “But Wolfgang wanted to run his own show. He wanted to be his own CEO in Germany.”
In an interview with The Times late last year, Reitzle said William Ford “was there at every interview” and was “fully supportive” of Reitzle’s plans for PAG.
It was Reitzle’s idea to leave the post and remain as a consultant, Ford said.
A European sophisticate, Reitzle said he admired the work done by such wide-ranging retailers as Prada and Gap.
“He must be a real unfathomable presence, a Renaissance man coming in and talking about cars in terms people had never heard before,” said David E. Davis, editorial director of Motor Trend.
Fields presided over a turn of fortunes at Mazda, from losing money to earning $9.7 million in the six months ended Sept. 30, the first half of the last Japanese fiscal year.
But Mazda, which was the No. 4 Asian import brand in the U.S. three years ago, has stumbled.
It was passed by Mitsubishi Motors Corp. in 2000, and last year it slipped from No. 5 to No. 6 as Hyundai Motor Co. passed it. It declined 18% in the first quarter of this year to be the No. 8 Asian import, passed by Kia Motors Co. and Toyota Motor Corp.’s Lexus unit.
Lewis Booth, a Mazda senior advisor, will succeed Fields at Mazda.
Ford shares rose 49 cents to $16.36 on the New York Stock Exchange.
