Don Petersen: He was One of Us!

The 1980s were a Renaissance of sorts for the Detroit auto industry.? The decade began with sanitized for your protection 350 cubic-inch V8s barely able to produce 200 bhp. But the ‘80s also saw the rapid and wide-spread use of microchips, which gave us back, in larger and larger doses, the muscle car performance of the ’60 and early ‘70s.

Coming out of the emissionized, fuel efficiency, safety Seventies, new, relevant product began to emerge.? The Ford trio of Lee Iacocca, Don DeLaRossa and Hal Sperlich had moved crosstown to Chrysler and with them came visions of front-wheel-drive K-cars and mini-vans, which Henry Ford despised.

Meanwhile, at Chevrolet, Chief Engineer, Don Runkle, was working some performance magic with the Corvette and Camaro platforms with help from his friends, including Dave McLellan, John Heinricy and Fred Schasma

At Ford, a mechanical engineer by the name of Don Petersen, with a zeal for quality and a vision of the future, took over the reins, starting as President in 1980 and serving as chairman and CEO from 1985 to 1990.? Petersen was just the second person outside of the Ford family to hold those leadership positions.

During the Petersen years, the Mustang did not become a front-wheel-drive Probe, but two radical, full-size sedans with aero styling and the names Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable propelled Ford’s share of the US light-vehicle market by nearly 6 percent from 1981 to 1989.

Oh, and for good measure, “Quality is Job One” as a Ford marketing tag, was introduced in 1981, after Petersen became president in 1980.

For those of us at enthusiast pubs such as Road & Track, Don Petersen was one of the “good guys.”? An ENTHUSIAST!? Under Petersen’s watch, in 1981 Ford formed the SVO group to design and develop performance parts and accessories related to the company's racing programs.? AND to produce performance production cars.? Michael Kranefuss ran the SVO group and he and a number of Ford engineers with racing in their veins joined R&T at events such at the Quaker State Longest Day of Nelson 24 Hours races where we raced a Mercury LN7 and a prototype 4-cylinder turbo SVO Mustang.

In 1976 the Bob Bondurant School of High performance driving, then located at Sears Point Raceway, switched from Datsuns to Ford products.? Petersen expanded that relationship to include sending Ford engineers—and himself—to Bob’s school.? I was up at Sears Point in 1988 when Don was wheeling a Formula Ford around the track.

Petersen recognized the connection between racing and road cars.? 50,000 miles of proving grounds durability testing?? It pales in comparison to the “destructive” testing of a 24-hour race.

Racing also teaches engineers how to think on their feet.? Engine won’t start on the assembly line?? No problem. Push it off and fix it later. But the Japanese knew better.? One of the tenets of the Toyota Production System is to stop the assembly line where a problem occurs..? Fix it THERE and THEN.? Don’t let it impact additional vehicles.

Race car won't fire up on the starting grid?? Better find the problem or lose the race!

And I can’t tell you how many quality issues racing uncovered that I could feed back to the Ford engineers to improve the production cars!

That was Don Petersen:? Quality is Job One.

Petersen escaped the “Detroit box.”? He didn’t suffer the myopia of many Detroit execs who thought the auto world began and ended at the River Rouge.? One of his ideas was getting Ford’s North American and European operations to cooperate and share more engineering duties.

In the 1980s when Ford was developing its full-size aero twins, Petersen invited the entire Team Taurus out to Seattle for three days to meet with Dan Mulally, Boeing’s chief engineer for the design of the triple-7, to discuss technology, process and being market-driven and customer-oriented.

Mulally would later join Ford as President and CEO.

And Petersen’s time with Ford truck engineering paid dividends in 1990 when the Ford Explorer, developed under Petersen’s watch, hit roads and trails as a kinder, gentler, more refined alternative to the Bronco.? An instant hit, the Explorer was a torch that helped ignite the SUV craze that began in the 1990s.

Don Petersen passed away last week . . . at the age of 97.

A quintessential car guy, Petersen understood the car biz from product planning to the engineering office to the showroom.? We need more like him.