Ford Motor Co. Chief Executive Officer Alan Mulally will drive to Washington for hearings on an industry loan package after members of Congress criticized automaker CEOs for flying corporate jets last month.
“He’s driving,” a Ford spokesman, Mark Truby, wrote in an e-mail today about Mulally’s plans for sessions set to start on Dec. 4. A General Motors Corp. spokesman, Tony Cervone, said “it is safe to assume” CEO Rick Wagoner won’t use a company plane, while a Chrysler LLC spokeswoman, Katie Hepler, declined comment on Robert Nardelli’s travel plans.
Avoiding private jets would allow the CEOs to show they heeded critics of their Nov. 18-19 testimony, when opponents said the planes symbolized industry arrogance from executives arguing that their companies need $25 billion in aid to survive.
“They’re doing the best they can do at this point for damage control,” said Robert Thompson, a professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University in New York. The lesson is “to not show up to these things in private jets anymore.”
On interstate highways, a trip to Washington from Dearborn, Michigan, where Ford is based, would cover 520 miles and take less than nine hours, according to Google Maps. GM is based in Detroit, and Chrysler in suburban Auburn Hills, Michigan.
Truby’s two-word e-mail didn’t elaborate on the plans by Mulally, 63, who was recruited to Ford from Boeing Co. in 2006. Cervone said he couldn’t discuss Wagoner’s travel further because of security reasons.
Planes for Sale
Two days after the uproar in Congress over the auto executives’ flights, Ford said it was considering selling its five jets, three of which are used for executive travel. GM is selling two of its seven planes, listing two for sale and asked aviation regulators to block the public’s ability to track a leased jet it uses, without saying why.
The leased Gulfstream Aerospace G-IV flew from Detroit to Washington on Nov. 18, when Wagoner testified before a Senate committee, followed by an appearance before a House panel a day later.
“Couldn’t you all have downgraded to first class?” Democratic Representative Gary Ackerman of New York asked the automaker chiefs during hearings Nov. 19.
Tomorrow’s Deadline
Mulally, Wagoner and Nardelli are working under a deadline of tomorrow to submit survival plans to Congress to show that the companies could repay any federal loans and remain viable. Congressional Democrats set that timetable after the CEOs’ initial appearances to seek U.S. aid.
Thompson, the Syracuse professor, said the new hearings will be a public-relations challenge for the automakers. Congress may vote on an aid package next week.
“You could show up in a barrel and people would say, ‘Oh look, they’re overcompensating,’” Thompson said.
Jerome York, an adviser to billionaire Kirk Kerkorian who was a former GM director and Chrysler finance chief, said it was “absolutely” a good thing for Mulally to drive to Washington.
“Tone setters are important, not only in a situation like the car companies are in right now but also internally within the organization,” York said in an interview on Bloomberg Television.
Whether executives drive or fly is “a no-win situation,” said Jason Vines, a former Chrysler spokesman who is helping organize a lobbying effort for the automakers. “If you do what people think is the right thing, then they’re just going to be reminded that you came in corporate jets before.”
Vines and Timothy Leuliette, CEO of auto supplier Dura Automotive Systems Inc., created a lobby group called the Engine of Democracy to build public support for an aid package. They’re assembling a group of representatives from each state connected to the auto industry to travel to Washington on Dec. 5, said Vines, who now works at Compuware Corp., an information- technology provider to GM.
Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/newsv
