Harold Arthur Poling
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Harold "Red" Arthur Poling (born 1925) is a U.S. automobile businessman.
He served as the president of the Ford Motor Company between 1985 and 1987, vice-chairman in 1988 and 1989,and as CEO and chairman of the Ford Motor Company from 1990 until 1993. He was widely considered as a savior of the company in his stint as executive vice-president for North America in the early 1980s.
Poling made his climb through the company as a financial executive, serving as a manager, assistant controller, and controller of the transmission and chassis division, then as controller of the engine division, then controller of the car product development group.
In the late 1970s he was vice-president of corporate staffs, then in 1980 replaced William O. Bourke as executive vice-president of North American Automotive Operations (the company's biggest operating unit). The company was in cash and cost trouble, and Bourke refused to make some of the cost cuts that chairman Phillip Caldwell thought necessary. Poling was never averse to cutting cost and succeeded in returning the unit to profitability.
Prior to joining Ford, Poling served as a fighter pilot in the U.S. Navy. His sometime corporate rival, Robert Lutz, had been a fighter pilot in the U.S. Marine Corps. Their clashes sometimes led subordinates to joke about "who won the dogfight today?"