A biography for William Clay Fordhasn’t been written yet.
“The day will come when the notion of car ownership becomes antiquated. If you live in a city, you don't need to own a car.”
“I don't want anybody, whether it's my grandchildren or any of our employees' grandchildren, to have to apologise for working for Ford Motor Company. In fact, I want the opposite. I want them to look and say, 'What a difference we made!'”
“At Ford Motor Company, we believe the arts speak a common language that weaves a common thread among all people.”
“In the time of the robber barons, my great grandfather insisted on reinvesting and sharing profits with workers... He was told he was a socialist, that he was not welcome on Wall Street.”
“What cooler way to grow up for an American boy than to be around cars and football?”
“I think I was the first executive to ever speak at a Greenpeace business conference, in London in 2001. That didn't play well here at Ford, but I thought it was an important signal to send internally, that these were the kind of issues we needed to be grappling with.”
“I look at safety as, you know, there's active and passive. Passive is how do you survive a crash. Active is accident avoidance. And so that's real-time information to you, as a driver, and to your car, to the wheels of a car that will get you out of a bad situation.”
“Whenever I'm at a party, people are always telling me either to get a new quarterback or make the Taurus back seat bigger.”
“The climate is changing, and anyone who disagrees is, in my view, still in denial.”
“My father was a great business leader and humanitarian who dedicated his life to the company and the community. He also was a wonderful family man, a loving husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather. He will be greatly missed by everyone who knew him, yet he will continue to inspire us all.”
“There are people who think I'm a Bolshevik, and this is all a major distraction at best and heresy at worst. But I really don't care.”
“Cars will talk to each other and the world around them to make driving both safer and more efficient. 'Vehicle-to-vehicle' and 'vehicle-to-infrastructure' connectivity will become commonplace.”
“When I joined Ford, in the late 1970s, I felt strongly we could not forever be a huge user of natural resources without there being consequences. But I was alone in my thinking in those days.”