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Alan Mulally, remember that name. He may be delusional, but he just took the reins at Ford Motor Company. Why is this news? Well, other than replacing a man named Ford at the top, he turned around Boeing’s commercial planes division that was slipping fast. He introduced the 777 and 787 which have largely saved the commercial division from falling behind Airbus and have now put Airbus behind the eight ball.

A lot of people had speculated that Bill Ford was in waaaayyyy over his head and that he might step down. Most people assumed someone from inside the company, or at least inside Detroit, would take over the top job as the Big Three had traditionally done. Maybe Ford took a long look at what happened to Chrysler when outsiders were brought in to run the company (Chrysler is not only profitable, but has cars people want to buy)?

Mulally is a design geek and has business sense, a combination that those inside Detroit seem to be sorely lacking. He was able to trim Boeing’s line from 15 planes to 4 (hmm, does that sound familiar?) and drastically cut production to make the commercial business profitable.

These are some of the challenges Mulally will face at Ford. I hope for the company’s sake that the Ford Family gives him a long leash and doesn’t expect the turnaround to happen tomorrow. He’s either going to be Lee Iacocca or Jacques Nasser and he may be Ford’s last chance. I wouldn’t buy the stock based on this, but I think they made a great decision hiring Mulally.