Ford's New Man

A reliable regent

Only two days before the regular meeting of Ford Motor Co.'s board. Chairman Henry Ford II, looking trim and puffing a fat cigar, assured reporters that no new president would be named this month to succeed the unceremoniously sacked Lee Iacocca. Evidently Ford was only trying to confuse the newsmen, because last week the directors indeed named a new president.

He is Philip Caldwell, 58, a decisive but low-keyed executive, who has won Ford's attention as problem solver in a succession of jobs: chief of the company's truck operations, president of Philco-Ford, and head of automaking operations outside North America. Last year he was elevated to the title of vice chairman and membership in the newly formed office of the chief executive (along with Iacocca and Ford).

The presidential appointment confirms that Caldwell is Henry Ford's choice to be the ranking executive outside the family during the sensitive years of his transfer of power. The chairmanship of Ford Motor Co. is the last hereditary throne in American big business, and Henry II wants to make sure another Ford takes it over. Mindful of his own battle in the mid-1940s to wrest control of the company from Director Harry Bennett, who had gained sway over his aged grandfather Henry I, Henry II wants no willful executives who might contest a smooth succession.

His plan appears to be to hand over the title of chief executive when he reaches 63 in 1980; presumably the heir would be Caldwell. The chairmanship would go two years later to Brother William Clay Ford, now 53, the owner of the Detroit Lions; Henry brought him into the top management last June. But Henry II will remain a board member until he is 70, giving him time enough perhaps to execute the last flourish of his plan: to install Son Edsel, now 29 and assistant managing director of Ford of Australia, as chairman of his great-grandfather's company. qed

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