Sublime

The company also created a new brand, Pontiac, to fill the price gap between Chevrolet, at the bottom of the ladder, and Oakland, on the next rung up. Pontiac represented a further deviation from Ford’s approach, in which carmakers focused on making a single model.

My dream to build up the parts side of the business was starting to come true. As I was able to buy better cars, Mather was able to stock more and better parts, including motors, transmissions, and rear ends. As this happened, the business relied less on scrap iron, which gradually went from the main revenue stream to a byproduct of the parts busin

The pattern for pricing Ford cars was based on apparent comparative prices for 1909 and 1910: the greater the volume the lower the price. Hawkins and his people brought us our first challenging volume. That challenge had to be met by faster production. True, it was the car that made the salesmen, but it was the sales organization that sparked the g

The problem, McLean decided, was the maritime mindset: Pan-Atlantic’s staff, experienced in the slow-moving ways of the maritime industry, did not know how to sell to an industrial traffic manager who cared not about ships, but about getting freight to the customer on schedule at low cost. McLean brought in a team of aggressive young trucking execu