Motoryzacja

Ford Motor Co. has appointed a veteran auto industry insider and Detroit native to head its sales and marketing operations for the Ford, Lincoln and Mercury brands in the United States. Ken Czubay, 59, will assume the post July 16 and report to Jim Farley, Ford's group vice president of marketing and communications.

Ford Motor Co.'s Mercury brand, whose sales have dwindled to less than a third of their 1978 peak, has a changing role as the automaker concentrates more on its Ford and Lincoln brands, the company's marketing chief said.

While the Mercury Mariner crossover and Sable sedan scored impressive gains in January, overall sales for Ford Motor Co.'s long-sinking Mercury brand were off by 35% during the first month. That's on top of a 7% decline in 2007 that left Mercury with just 168,422 sales last year -- exactly 1 percentage point of share in the United States. At its peak, in 1985,Mercury sold 528,033 vehicles.

The 2009 Lincoln MKS sedan is about to become the next flagship of Lincoln Mercury, according to Mark Fields, Ford Motor Co.'s president of the Americas.
Fields spoke briefly Monday night at Metropolitan Lincoln Mercury in Garden City, one of the nation's top Lincoln Mercury dealers, to a crowd of several hundred VIP's who gathered to see the unveiling of the car.

Elena Ford said there are a lot of ways that Ford's marketing division can cut costs. Ford, 42, was named to the new position of director of global marketing, sales and service last week. Ford said she will manage a small, energetic team of fewer than 10 that will work with Ford's marketing and sales organizations to streamline operations.