Feature
Issue No. 1 - July/August 2001
Driving Mitsubishi
Tom Phillips leads from the front seat
The rollercoaster ride taken by Mitsubishi in the past two years has made them cautious, even suspicious. It is a remarkable tribute to their determination that they continue to crank out cars that even the most jaded motoring writers acknowledge are absolutely top quality.
These days it is also a tribute to one of Mitsubishi’s newest employees, an ordinary enough guy who likes nothing better than a glass of red and a game of golf with his wife, not necessarily in that order.
Tom Phillips joined the company as managing director on 27 June — just a year ago. Not a great deal was said about him personally at the time. For the previous 14 years he’d worked for arch-rival Toyota, mostly in its retail, sales and parts operations, most recently as Toyota’s director of sales and marketing. He’d gained some top level experience by also being on the Toyota Board but, in effect, he was a car salesman rather than a car maker — albeit at a fairly elevated level.
For anyone who thought about it at the time, this was probably OK. Mitsubishi’s problems were not essentially operational ones. The company’s production problems, if there were any, were not causing the life or death issues that made headlines every second week.
The real issues were selling more cars, developing new markets, improving the company’s image and selling it as a positive going concern to its masters in Tokyo — as well as keeping his production base intact and maintaining worker morale in the face of the most despairing rumours.
“Tom Phillips has been very much the sort of leader we needed at this time,” says Mitsubishi public relations manager Kevin Taylor, whose efforts at attempting to manage a daily, continuing crisis have also been nothing short of heroic. “I don’t think anyone outside really appreciates what we’ve gone through. You’ve saved the place in the morning, and by the af...
