Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) CEO Alan Mulally will be remembered for two things.

The first is that he turned around the No. 2 U.S. car maker and kept it out of Chapter 11 while its rivals GM (NYSE: GM) and Chrysler went into bankruptcy and took federal support.

The other is that he was rumored to have flirted with the Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) board in 2013 about possibly replacing then-CEO Steve Ballmer. The Ford board of directors rewarded him for Ford’s ongoing success which began shortly after he took the helm in September 2006.He received a pay package of $23 million for 2013.

Mulally joined Ford just before the recession ate into U.S. car sales. The horrible downdraft in revenue coupled with labor costs pressured margins at all of The Big Three. Ford borrowed $23.6 billion which tided it over until American car sales began to recover

Mulally’s 2013 pay package is not the first time Ford’s board has been generous with him. Over the last three years, his pay packages have totaled almost $75 million. The generosity of Ford’s board comes apparently a year or two before his retirement

Ford’s turnaround has stumbled recently as sales in the U.S. have slowed somewhat.Its sales have dropped slightly this year, and its market share has fallen to near 15%. A resurgence in Chrysler’s sales probably have not helped.

Ford faces three challenges. The first is that the rapid rise in U.S. car sales may have ended. The American economy has not burst out of the recession, and unemployment has stayed stubbornly above 6% Some economists wonder how long the auto industry can posed explosive growth.

Another problem Ford has not been able to solve is losses in Europe. In the fourth quarter of last year, it reported $571 million in red ink . Europe has been slower to recover from the Great Recession than America. And Ford has remained well behind China cars sales leaders VW and GM in China. The People’s Republic is now the world’s largest car market. No large global manufacture can flourish without success there.

Even if Ford’s results this year are mediocre, Mulally will be remembered for what he did to bring Ford out of one of the darkest periods since its founding.

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