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DETROIT (Reuters) - Ford Motor CEO Alan Mulally and Executive Chairman Bill Ford Jr. met with representatives of billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian's Tracinda Corp. investment firm, the automaker said on Tuesday.

"The informal meeting was positive and a chance for the leaders of both companies to discuss elements of Ford's transformation plan that we have announced publicly," Ford said in a statement. "We continue to welcome confidence in Ford by our various stakeholders."

A spokesman for Tracinda had no comment on the meeting.

Kerkorian, a long-time activist investor in the auto industry, has acquired a roughly 5.5-percent stake in Ford, which remains controlled by its founding family.

The Ford family holds about a 3 percent stake in the automaker but controls about 40 percent of the voting power in the company because of a separate class of shares established when it went public in 1956.

Tracinda has invested about $861 million in Ford stock over the past two months, including a heavily oversubscribed tender offer concluded earlier this month.

The investment comes at a time of slumping demand for the U.S. auto industry, which has seen sales drop to their lowest level in a decade as consumers defect from heavier and more expensive trucks and SUVs in the face of record gas prices.

In May, Ford abandoned a long-standing goal of returning to profitability in 2009, saying that it believed the U.S. market had shifted permanently away from trucks and SUVs.

In response, Ford is cutting 15 percent of its white-collar expenses in North America and shifting production out of its light-truck plants.

Kerkorian, who had offered to buy the luxury Jaguar and Land Rover brands from Ford last year, has said that while he may propose business strategies for Ford, he is not seeking any changes to Ford's board or management.

The No. 2 U.S. automaker said earlier on Tuesday that it would idle a Wayne, Michigan plant that builds the Lincoln Navigator and Ford Expedition for nine weeks and a Kentucky truck plant for four weeks this summer.

Kerkorian, 91, has held stakes in all three U.S. based automakers, most recently agitating for change at Ford's larger rival General Motors Corp.

Tracinda acquired a stake in GM that began as a passive investment three years ago, but quickly pushed for changes that included naming Kerkorian's auto industry adviser, Jerry York, to GM's board.

When GM rejected Kerkorian's suggestion for an alliance with Renault-Nissan, York left the board and Kerkorian sold his nearly 10-percent stake in GM.