Bill Ford fired his CEO and took the wheel of Ford himself in the 2001 crisis

By the autumn of 2001 Ford Motor Company was in its worst crisis in decades. The Firestone tire saga had forced the recall of 6.5 million tires in August 2000, and in May 2001 Ford announced it would replace the remaining 15, 16 and 17-inch Firestone Wilderness AT tires, dragging the Explorer — Ford's profit engine — through a safety scandal. Quality scores slipped, dealers were alienated by CEO Jacques Nasser's e-commerce and branding experiments, and the year closed with a net loss of $5,453 million.

On October 30, 2001, the company's Form 8-K settled the question in three sentences: Jacques Nasser was retiring from the company 'effective immediately'; William Clay Ford Jr., Henry Ford's great-grandson, was named chief executive officer while continuing as chairman of the board; and Nick Scheele was appointed chief operating officer. A chairman appointing himself CEO was almost unheard of at a company of Ford's size, and it happened here because the family's Class B shares gave the board the power to act in a single day.

The new management moved fast. On January 11, 2002, Ford announced its Revitalization Plan: North American plant operating capacity would fall by about one million vehicles by mid-decade, around 12,000 hourly jobs would be affected in 2002 on top of 3,000 in 2001, and twenty new or freshened products would launch in the United States every year through mid-decade. Bill Ford kept the CEO seat until September 2006, when he recruited Alan Mulally from Boeing — the family had first reset trust with customers and dealers, then handed daily operations back to a professional.

The January 2002 Revitalization Plan cut about 1 million units of North American capacity and around 15,000 hourly jobs to match cost with demand.

The recall crisis had turned customers, dealers and juries against a management style that prioritized brand-building over warranty basics.

Nasser's e-commerce and consumer-strategy projects looked like distractions while the core business bled money.

Only the Ford family could change the CEO without a coup: its Class B stock gives it 40 percent voting control, so the board could reset leadership in one announcement.

Bill Ford took the title himself to signal accountability, while installing Nick Scheele, a veteran manufacturing executive, as COO to actually run the company.

The Revitalization Plan cut capacity and payroll to match real demand instead of chasing volume with rebates.

When a hired star loses the dealers and the workforce, the family name can reset trust in a way no outsider can — but the heir must also know when to hand operations back to a professional.

Bill Ford served as CEO until September 2006, when he brought in Boeing's Alan Mulally as CEO and stayed on as executive chairman. In December 2006 Ford mortgaged essentially all of its assets, including the blue oval logo, for a credit line of about $23.4 billion — the war chest that let it refuse the 2009 federal bailouts that pushed GM and Chrysler into Chapter 11 while Ford stayed out of court. Bill Ford remains executive chairman of the company his great-grandfather founded.