Long before Automotive News was available 24/7 on the Internet, a young Jim Farley would spend Christmastime catching up on the industry's latest happenings with his grandfather, who was an early Ford Motor Co. employee.
"I would come to visit him, and we would read Automotive News together," Farley told us last week. "He would save them up all year."
After getting his first automotive job, in the strategic planning department for Toyota's new Lexus division in 1990, he dreamed of becoming important enough to appear in the pages of Automotive News himself.
"Early on in my career, I just wanted to be in it," he said. "That stopped probably 10 years after I joined the industry, and then I was scared to be in it."
We hope Farley has since overcome that fear. Because in the nearly 14 months since he took over as Ford's CEO in October 2020, our archives show he's been in Automotive News 153 times, or almost three times a week. Actually — counting this page and two other stories at the front of this issue — make that 156.
And he doesn't even have to wait until Christmas to read them.
