Farley, a former star at Toyota, becomes Ford's new No. 2

Jim Farley, the grandson of a Ford Motor Co. dealer and a car nut who became a fast-rising executive at Toyota Motor Corp., is now Ford's No. 2 executive and the leading candidate to become its next CEO.

Farley, 57, was promoted last week to COO, in charge of the company's global operations and tasked with leading its efforts to expand into mobility services and autonomous vehicle technology.

After a nearly two-decade career at Toyota, Farley joined Ford in 2007 and has served in multiple leadership positions in business units around the world. His latest role will be his most challenging, as he attempts to steer Ford through a transformation of its product portfolio at a time when it's under intense pressure from Wall Street to deliver profits.

CEO Jim Hackett said Farley is the "right person" for the position, and dealers describe him as a hands-on car guy and marketing whiz. His promotion comes as Ford parts ways with Joe Hinrichs, its president of automotive who was seen as Farley's chief competitor to eventually succeed Hackett.

"I'm very humbled by this responsibility to work with Bill [Ford] and Jim and all the team members," Farley said in an interview. "My grandfather joined the company in the early 1900s. I think of him every day when I walk the halls at Ford, and I think about the responsibility we have as leaders to make the right decisions for our retailers and customers."

He said his top priorities in his new role relate to operational execution.

"We've made the tough decisions on the portfolio and our regional adjustments," he told Automotive News. "It's really down to executing this new lineup and taking advantage of new capabilities like connectivity. We have all these new products coming out, so we need to launch them and use them to improve our financial performance."

Ford's stock continued its downward trend last week after the company posted a $1.7 billion fourth-quarter loss, partly attributable to the troubled launch of the Explorer crossover. Hackett said Ford needed to act with more urgency and improve its execution.

"I think when Ford's at its best, we're just perfectionists," Farley said. "Everything has to go really well. Hope isn't a strategy. These launches are very complex, and the team has to get a performance improvement."

Farley, who grew up religiously paging through copies of Automotive News, has a long history with the Blue Oval. While spending the summer in California at age 14, he bought a black 1965 Mustang fastback, rebuilt the engine, then traded a plane ticket for gas money and drove to Michigan — without a license — to visit his parents.

As a child, his friends called him "Jimmy Car-Car." He's an avid racer who still races Ford vehicles on the weekends and has joked that some of the biggest headaches in his marriage come from haggling a yearly budget for the hobby.

He joined Toyota in 1990 in the strategic planning department and served in several product and marketing positions in the U.S. and Europe, according to his Ford bio. He helped Toyota launch the now-defunct Scion brand and eventually rose to become group vice president and general manager of Lexus.

Ford's then-CEO Alan Mulally lured him back to Detroit in 2007 to serve on the company's marketing leadership team. He went to Europe in 2015 and helped turn around Ford's money-losing operations there through aggressive cost cuts and new product introductions. Ford achieved record profitability there in 2016.

When Hackett assumed the CEO role in May 2017, Farley returned to North America as Ford's executive vice president and president of global markets. He was named president of new business, technology and strategy in 2019.

"Jim's passion for great vehicles and his intense drive for results are well known," Hackett said. "He also has developed into a transformational leader with the imagination and foresight to help lead Ford into the future."

Farley last week pushed back on investor criticism that Ford hasn't moved swiftly enough in enacting elements of Hackett's turnaround plan.

"We have acted very urgently," he said. "We redid our portfolio really quickly. We put in place some major restructuring in Europe and South America. We decided to invest $11 billion in electrification. We put connectivity in all of our vehicles. We got serious about partnerships. That's acting urgently."

In his introductory press conference as COO, Farley said Ford has all the foundational elements in place to execute on its plans. He told Automotive News that he hoped to convince Wall Street that the company was crafting a high-margin business, with potential for significant profits from its autonomous vehicle unit and emerging mobility services.

"Those are going to be the proof points for the sustainability of Ford's transformation," he said. "We believe in it."