Ford (F) Just Set A Record, But It’s The Worst Kind

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jul 20, 9:00AM EDT

Key Points

Ford (NYSE: F) set a new industry record for vehicle recalls in the first half of the year, surpassing its entire 2023 total and even the number of vehicles it produced last year, raising serious concerns about product quality and operational execution.
Despite investing nearly $30 billion into electric vehicles, Ford’s EVs like the Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning are seeing sluggish sales, and CEO Jim Farley now concedes that Chinese EV makers pose an “extinction-level” threat to the company.
Wall Street’s average target price for Ford stock is now below its current trading level, indicating a lack of investor confidence in the company’s strategy and future profitability.

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Ford (F) Just Set A Record, But It’s The Worst Kind — © 24/7 Wall St

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Transcript:

Douglas: So our, uh, friends at the Ford Motor Company the worst run company in the world, not car company, just company, they just set a record. A record, okay. It’s not, this was in June. They set the record for the most recalls of any car company ever. And they set it in half a year. In other words, they recalled more cars in the first half of this year than they did all of last year.

[00:00:33] Douglas: Okay.

[00:00:34] Lee Jackson: Is that good or bad?

[00:00:36] Douglas: that also means they recalled more cars than they made last year. Okay? I want this to think, I want this to sink in for all of you people who think that I beat up on the Ford Motor Company too much. Record recall more than last year’s, whole year, than they made last year. It’s almost impossible, except they obviously made, have made cars for many, many years.

[00:00:59] Douglas: But can you imagine having more recalls in a year than you cars you made? I mean,

[00:01:06] Lee Jackson: Is it predominantly the same issue over and over, or is it just

[00:01:10] Douglas: no, no.

[00:01:11] Lee Jackson: just

[00:01:12] Douglas: every

[00:01:12] Lee Jackson: line issues? Yeah.

[00:01:15] Douglas: every recall is something different, they do it across their model lines, the Lincolns, you know, it’s like,

[00:01:22] Lee Jackson: Well,

[00:01:22] Douglas: I’m

[00:01:23] Lee Jackson: and you know what I saw recently and I hadn’t seen this, and maybe you have ’cause you covered them close, you know more than I do. There is now a Mustang mock, uh, SUV small SUV

[00:01:36] Douglas: Well,

[00:01:36] Lee Jackson: electric.

[00:01:37] Douglas: is what they did this, the Ford people are just, they aren’t just dummies, they’re idiots. This is what they did. So they decided they’re gonna get into the EV business a few years ago. So what

[00:01:47] Lee Jackson: Right,

[00:01:47] Douglas: say, well, we’ll use our two most iconic brands. To help us jumpstart it. So they took the F-150, the F-Series is the best

[00:01:56] Lee Jackson: right, right.

[00:01:57] Douglas: vehicle in the United States for 47 years. The F-150 big gas powered full-size SUV, and they put the word lightning on it. Okay, so that’s your ev. Full size pickup. Then for reasons that are completely beyond the comprehension of anybody in the universe, they took the Mustang from 1965. It’s, it’s a sports card, ladies

[00:02:23] Lee Jackson: Right.

[00:02:24] Douglas: They decided to use that name on a crossover ev, so it’s the Mustang Mach e.

[00:02:32] Lee Jackson: Is this newer than the, than the, the mock the car, ev, the the Mustang ev car,

[00:02:40] Douglas: Yeah, it’s called the Mustang Mock E. It’s, it’s their, it, it’s a crossover ev that they bolted the Mustang name onto. It’s like, well, why don’t we use a brand that people already know? It’s like, are you out of your cotton picking mind

[00:02:58] Lee Jackson: Yeah,

[00:02:59] Douglas: now?

[00:02:59] Lee Jackson: that’s nuts. That’s just nuts.

[00:03:01] Douglas: any of ’em. They’re not selling. They sell a few thousand of these cars every quarter, and they spent almost $30 billion to get into this business. And Jim Farley, the CEO, said, well, you know, what we’re gonna do is people like hybrids, so we’re gonna, you know, we’re gonna do more work on hybrids. It’s like, why the Toyota people figured that out years ago? What’s, what’s, what’s, what’s the

[00:03:25] Lee Jackson: So did everybody else. Yeah.

[00:03:28] Douglas: better though? It’s so awesome. So Farley goes to China and he sees the EVs. He comes back, he goes to a conference last week and he says basically the, the Chinese EVs are an extinction level event for us. If they get in the United States, we might as well call everybody on the phone and tell ’em to go home. Ford isn’t gonna be open anymore. He’s just talks about how awesome they are and they are. I get it. They’re awesome. They’re Chinese. You know what they did? They let Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) | TSLA Price Prediction make cars in their Shanghai factory. looked at like they always do. They looked at. How do they make the EVs? They ripped it off. They ripped off

[00:04:10] Lee Jackson: Of course they didn’t.

[00:04:10] Douglas: did,

[00:04:11] Lee Jackson: Yeah, of course.

[00:04:12] Douglas: make a car that’s good or better than a Tesla

[00:04:16] Douglas: We’ll get government subsidies.

[00:04:18] Lee Jackson: Right.

[00:04:19] Douglas: labor is cheaper. And then we’ll go and we’ll rule the world. We’ll rule the world in EVs

[00:04:26] Lee Jackson: No,

[00:04:26] Douglas: and

[00:04:27] Lee Jackson: so.

[00:04:27] Douglas: and so now. Now Farley’s afraid. He’s

[00:04:30] Lee Jackson: They’re.

[00:04:31] Douglas: Ford Motor Company could sell. It’s like, you’re right. If for any reason President Trump or anybody else for that matter, drops those a hundred percent tariffs on Chinese EVs, that’s all she wrote. just it. And, and

[00:04:45] Lee Jackson: From, from that standpoint, absolutely. They’ll have to jettison the entire thing. And then what, what kind of write off would that be? If you had to write the whole thing off?

[00:04:56] Douglas: Here’s

[00:04:56] Lee Jackson: Uh,

[00:04:57] Douglas: I checked the Wall Street, uh, estimates on stock price. Okay?

[00:05:03] Lee Jackson: right.

[00:05:04] Douglas: The Wall Street estimates for the stock price okay, are below where the stock trains. Now,

[00:05:13] Lee Jackson: Uh oh.

[00:05:14] Douglas: if you take the average, and think about it for a second, if the, if the

[00:05:17] Lee Jackson: The average target X

[00:05:19] Douglas: The

[00:05:19] Lee Jackson: than where it trades now.

[00:05:20] Douglas: The stocks are the low. So anyway, uh, we just have to have that rant on Ford

[00:05:25] Douglas: It’s just, you know, EVs, gonna crush ’em.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.