Ford's Escape Route

In the spring of 2003, Phil Martens saw trouble down the road.

As head of product development for Ford, he was supervising the creation of what could be one of the most important vehicles in company history. While the car wasn't due to come out until the fall of 2004, the team needed to be in launch mode right then to stay on schedule.

It wasn't. It was still pulling marathon hours just trying to get the thing running properly.

The vehicle was the much-anticipated gas-electric hybrid that CEO Bill Ford Jr. had been touting for a couple of years as emblematic of the new, environmentally friendly Ford. The Ford Escape Hybrid would be the first hybrid SUV; it would handle like a muscular V-6, yet sip gas -- 36 miles per gallon, about 50% better than a standard Escape; its emissions would be minuscule. It was the most technically advanced product the automaker had ever attempted to put into mass production.

The hybrid team was packed with PhDs, but for all of their technical prowess, the brainiacs had one weakness: little launch experience. Martens needed someone to crack the whip without destroying morale, someone to persuade the scientists to stop perfecting and start finishing the vehicle. That someone was Mary Ann Wright -- part spark plug, part disciplinarian, and all Ford.

A self-described "car nut," Wright, 42, has launched Sables, Tauruses, and Lincolns. Her discipline is legendary. Twelve-plus-hour days. Five hours of sleep. Four a.m. workouts. She has blond bangs, blue eyes, a firm handshake, and the confidence of someone who doesn't miss deadlines. "My launches are really, really good," she says. Somehow this doesn't come across as a boast.

Even with Wright on board, staying on schedule wasn't a sure thing. Introducing one major technology is a challenge. The Escape Hybrid contains nine such technologies. By the time Ford sends it to dealers in September, this SUV will have been in the works for a little more than five years. In addition to overcoming herculean technical hurdles, Ford collaborated with suppliers around the globe. "This is an unusually complex team with little or no experience with hybrid technology," says Martens, "and they're introducing this unusually complex technology into a mainstream manufacturing system without any flaws."

With a little more than a year to go, the team told Wright it could deliver the vehicle -- but three months late. That may not sound like much for such a complicated and lengthy project, but to Ford, nothing good could come from a delay. It would generate bad publicity and erase good buzz. Besides, there was already confusion over whether the project had been delayed (Ford insisted it hadn't) and whether Ford was relying on Toyota's technology (it wasn't).

Concerned about alienating her new team, Wright asked Martens to play the heavy. "We are going to deliver on time," he told the team. "You have to throw out all the processes and tools that you'd normally use on a normal gas engine and reinvent the way you do it. Anything you need you'll get." The group's reaction? "You could have heard a pin drop," Martens recalls.

Or better yet, a clock ticking.

Creating a dramatically different product is a staggering challenge for any organization, but for the oldest and second-largest American automaker, it's a higher, steeper mountain to scale. Ford Motor Co. has been making cars for 101 years -- cars with one motor. Open the hood of a hybrid, and you'll find two: one gas, the other electric.

As a "full" hybrid, the Escape can run on either motor. Its network monitors an array of computers to determine which motor can drive the wheels most efficiently. In an instant, the vehicle balances the dueling demands for power and acceleration and for high mileage and low emissions. For team member Tom Gee, Ford's announcement of a mass-produced hybrid was "the equivalent of Kennedy saying, 'We're going to the moon by the end of the decade.' " At Ford, vehicle programs are typically ranked 1 to 10, according to the complexity of the power train. "This was a 20," says longtime researcher Mike Tamor.

The stakes are particularly high because Honda and Toyota introduced their hybrids in the United States first -- in 1999 and 2000, respectively. Although they lacked the power and roominess of conventional cars, the first gas-electric models found a niche audience. Last year, Toyota released a zippier Prius, but Ford insists that its Escape is going where no hybrid has gone before: into the mainstream. The pitch? No compromises on acceleration, towing capacity, cargo space, fuel economy, or emissions. Not only is it the first hybrid manufactured by an American automaker, but it's also the first hybrid SUV. Ford has plenty of competition in the rearview mirror, though; over the next three years, the major automakers plan to release 20 new hybrids, many of them SUVs and trucks. "The next six months are crucial," says Lindsay Brooke, senior analyst for CSM Worldwide, an automotive forecasting and consulting outfit. "Ford won't have this to themselves for long."