Not going to say Ford is perfect, they have made their mistakes as most of the Detroit auto industry did, at times they have been at the head of the pack, others falling behind. As far as the ablity of the Ford family, Edsel Ford was probably the most talented of the scions and descendants of Henry, he was the one responsible for the MKI lincoln (helped design it), and also helped wrest power away from the old man to allow Ford to modernize, and it was Edsall who was primarily responsible for Ford's transformation into a war time supplier, including the Rouge plant that produced bombers for the air force among other things. Henry the II was responsible for a lot of more than stupid decisions, including the Edsel, as well as charming things like the Mustang II and the Pinto,happened under his watch.......Ford also still to this day makes some of the higher quality cars among the US big three, and that was because they in the 80's and 90's totally reworked how they make cars. Not to mention they were the only of the big three who didn't need to be bailed out by the government in 2008..so not necessarily bad management.
Bill Ford's problem is that he isn't a numbers guy, in many ways his problem is he is too much the dreamer IMO. At a time when the US auto industry was/is basically doubling down on Trucks and SUV's, he made a big push for hybrid technology and improving fuel mileage,which unfortunately wasn't what the public wanted in a time when gas prices are still ridiculously low compared to the past, everyone wants the SUV and pickup trucks. I suspect the vision for this building was him as well, and it isn't the first generation, for all his faults Henry II tried to do what he could to revitalize Detroit, the Renaissance project was his baby for example.
I hope this works out for them, a neat building was saved, and I hope it does help revitalize Detroit. Ford alone was not responsible for the decline in Detroit, that was shared equally with the big 3 and also with a number of other factors both political and social, which doesn't really have a place in this thread (at least talking about Ford and its history has context to the train station). I don't think this was strictly a numbers thing, I doubt that, if this was just the beancounters there is no way Ford would have taken the risk, I think this was in part seeing a possible opportunity to revitalize Detroit, to put a 'good face' on Ford, and also potentially create something unique with the station that helps Ford (new products, in a kind of 'skunkworks' in the city and away from corporate Ford) as well as maybe serving as the hub for similar kinds of startups and ventures. Will they ever recoup the many hundreds of millions they will sink into this? Hard to say, they could if Detroit comes back, office space that 30 years ago was going for 20 bucks a square foot in lower Manhattan is now 4 or 5 times that today....not to mention in the end even if it never generates much return, it definitely has left something special behind.
