How can a group of smart people look so dumb?

An article in the NYT about Ford's 'surprising' bad news following its surprising good news of profitability just last quarter, in which it announced a three-month profit of $100M.

"Ford… will accelerate plans to bring small cars and crossovers it sells in
international markets to North America." [So, will the people people
with 'I work for Ford, I drive a Ford' license plate frames and 'Lost your job
yet? Keep buying foreign' bumper stickers buy cars made by Ford in
France?]

Mulally: "What we're really trying to do is understand what the real demand
is going to be going forward."

'…the striking shift by consumers from trucks and SUVs into smaller cars
and crossovers now appears to be "structural in nature" rather than a short-term
reaction to gas prices.

"We needed to act now," Mulally said.

"They had no choice but to do this now," said Joseph Phillippi of New
Jersey's AutoTrends Consulting.

Now? How about three or four years ago when all the indicators pointed toward rising gas prices, a housing bubble, and increasing environmental legislation and public concern? If Ford had spent as much on negotiations with Toyota to license their hybrid technology in their SUVs, pickups, and cars as they did on marketing useless E85 engines with 20 year old fuel efficiencies, they'd be lining up perfectly with the market right now, looking at an inevitable shift toward car production but without the cliff-like drop of truck sales.

I've learned that if you think everyone in a medium to large organization is stupid, blind, or inept you probably don't know the whole story. There must be reasons for why Ford positioned itself so that its only strategy is to react after the market shifts predictably. I just can't believe that any of them, given their performance the last few years, could have been good enough to justify this outcome. I have a morbid fascination with the repeated missteps and flaccid reactions of the Big 3, given the devastating effect they're having on my town and state. I feel like a deer watching the forest bursting into flame all around it, too fascinated by each spark to pack up and leave.