How did the Sierra Club choose the Mercury Mariner for its most recent engineering award?
Carl Pope: When Ford came out with the Escape Hybrid, we actually tried to work with them on the launch, to do what we had done for Toyota and Honda. But the second-tier vice presidents at Ford froze us out, because they were irritated that we kept pounding for other things they were doing. So Ford didn’t really want to play ball. And they launched the Escape. By the time they launched the Mariner a year-and-a-half later, Bill Ford had made it clear that he thought that was kind of foolish. Why not have the support of the Sierra Club? So we launched the Mariner at our Summit in San Francisco. We actually think it is our job to try to encourage automotive innovation. The public perception is that we are all “stick,” always beating up on the auto industry. Actually, we have a robust history of trying to offer financial carrots to innovate, all of which have been rebuffed. The auto industry has structural problems, such as legacy costs. We understand that Ford, GM, and DaimlerChrysler are
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