Bridgestone meets new Ford leaders
By Nedra Pickler
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Bridgestone Corp. executives are meeting with the new leadership of Ford Motor Co., six months after its U.S. subsidiary broke off a 95-year relationship with the automaker in a dispute over Firestone tire quality.
Bridgestone CEO Shigeo Watanabe met last weekend with Ford's new chief operating officer, Nick Scheele, said Bridgestone spokesman Ken Kitawaki. The meeting was in Hawai'i.
The officials agreed to meet again soon, although no date has been set, Kitawaki said. He said the next round of talks will include officials from Tokyo-based Bridgestone's U.S. unit, Bridgestone/Firestone Inc. of Nashville, Tenn.
Kitawaki called the meeting "fruitful," while Ford spokesman Ken Zino called it "productive," but neither company would say what was discussed.
Ford had been using Firestone tires as original equipment on its vehicles for 95 years, but Bridgestone/Firestone CEO John Lampe cut off ties with Ford in May. A day later, Ford's then-CEO Jacques Nasser announced that it would replace all Firestone Wilderness AT tires on its vehicles because of quality concerns.
Bridgestone/Firestone said the tires were safe and that the Explorer had an unsafe design that was to blame in accidents involving its tires. Although Bridgestone/Firestone stopped selling Firestone tires to the automaker, Bridgestone has continued to sell tires to Ford worldwide.
Bridgestone/Firestone had already recalled 6.5 million ATX, ATX II and Wilderness AT tires in August 2000 because they could lose their tread. The tires were mainly used as original equipment on the Ford Explorer and have been blamed in thousands of accidents and 271 deaths in the United States.
Bridgestone/Firestone broadened that recall last month to include 3.5 million more Wilderness AT tires.
Also last month, Nasser was replaced by William Clay Ford Jr., a great-grandson of company founder Henry Ford. Ford has said he would like to repair relations with Bridgestone.
Ford and Bridgestone/Firestone worked together at the beginning of the recall, but their relationship publicly unraveled during congressional hearings when officials from each company blamed the other for the problems.
