Mulally flew in from Boeing and Ford took off

Alan Mulally, passed over for the top job at Boeing after helping overhaul the plane company, climbed aboard struggling Ford Motor at the personal invitation of eponymous chairman and CEO Bill Ford and powered the automaker through a 180-degree turn back into the black.

Now he's about to retire after about eight years as Ford CEO, becoming a rarity in the auto business — an auto CEO who leaves on a high note.

COO Mark Fields is set to become CEO. No shrinking violet, Fields righted Mazda when Ford controlled that Japanese maker, and moved to the U.S., where he made some tough calls to turn Ford's North and South American operations back into profit-makers.

Mulally's Kansas-bred aw-shucks public persona and his offer, not entirely facetious, to stop what he was doing and sell anybody a car or truck, gave Ford an approachability it had lacked.

He leaves the Dearborn, Mich., company with a popular line of small and midsize cars, an array of alternative-power offerings and two key products in the wings, both radically redone — the 2015 Mustang and the 2015 aluminum-bodied F-150 pickup.

Ford had the money to develop those because Mulally OK'd a daring plan to mortgage the entire company — right down to the big blue oval logo — to raise money in 2006, just before lenders shut off the taps.

The move allowed Ford to continue developing models on a normal schedule even as rivals had to pull back and delay new cars and trucks due to lack of money.

That not only kept it in good stead with investors and other stakeholders, but helped it resist the scorn heaped on companies saved by a government bailout.

His stories about starting in the working world as a supermarket box boy and his folksy manner belied boardroom toughness. He became well known at Ford for knocking executives' heads, rewarding honesty about the status of projects and punishing those who tried to hide problems. Above all, he treasured team play.

"Everyone is part of the team, and everyone's contribution is respected, so everyone should participate," he told consultants McKinsey & Co. in November. "When people feel accountable and included, it is more fun."

While he'll be best remembered for saving Ford during the roughest stretch for the auto industry since the Great Depression, his dismantling of the company's way of doing business is a signal achievement.

To get executives to work together, he created a "war room" at Ford's headquarters. They met each week to review progress and were supposed to mark their portfolios with red, yellow and green markers to indicate how a project was proceeding. Mulally told USA TODAY in an interview that, week after week, the managers told him all was rosy. Mulally wasn't buying it: "Guys, we're losing billions."

Fields, now COO, was first to acknowledge some problems in making the tailgate work right on the Ford Edge he was overseeing.

At Mulally's prodding, the others started offering suggestions, instead of criticism or smug silence.

Eventually, others followed Fields' lead, creating a new sense of teamwork that could be Mulally's greatest legacy.

His other ongoing contribution: One Ford. That translates into developing each model just once, making it adaptable to all markets. For example: When he stepped in, Europe and America each had their own versions of the Focus, built on different platforms.

Vehicle teams were forced to work together to create single vehicles that could be sold in markets around the world. That meant shifting to the same product cycles so that the U.S. Focus was redesigned simultaneously with the European Focus, for example.

Today, there is one Focus compact with few differences between European and American models. Mustang, which for generations has been Ford's halo car in America, was redesigned to try to make it appeal to the rest of the world.

Mulally — who drove a Lexus LS 430 when he joined Ford, and called it the best car in the world — was frustrated at all the foreign luxury brands he saw in the corporate garage. Why wasn't anyone driving a Ford? Worse, he hated the looks of some of the company's key products.

So he pushed for more appealing styling and performance, and wanted more emphasis on the Lincoln luxury brand as credible rival to the Lexus he used to drive, as well as the top German models.

"The most important thing we can do — and we're doing — is to create an exciting, profitably growing Ford," he said at a USA TODAY CEO Forum. "We are now competing with the best companies in the world right here in the United States."