It’s a big day for Ford with the release of the new Focus, the company’s new global compact and a vehicle that has been heralded in some quarters as being as important to the automaker as the original Model T.

That’s quite an act to follow and stresses the “car of the masses” role that Ford sees the Focus playing. But it’s the thinking behind creating what the New York Times calls Ford’s “first truly global car — a single vehicle designed and engineered for customers in every region of the world and sold under one name” – that intrigues from a social media point of view.

More often than not, when you talk to brand executives about their customers and target markets they tend only to care about the region that affects them. Nevermind that online conversation and social media conversation is global in scope (though defined of course by language). So it was refreshing to read a CEO – Ford’s Alan Mulally – who not only gets the global impact of online conversation but also has learned from it and applied it to Ford’s product line.

As the NYT writes, Mulally was “prepared to stake Ford’s future on a thesis that consumers around the world are becoming more and more alike…[not least because] customers in disparate markets were already showing preferences for the same attributes in cars: safety, technology, fuel efficiency and appearance.” And how are they telling companies about this? Through social networks, blogs and car forums of course. “The Internet was allowing car buyers everywhere to pore over the specifications of vehicles available in the United States or Europe, enabling consumers in developing countries to home in on quality products in mature markets and empowering them not to settle for lesser products,” notes the NYT.

Ford also is one of the most forward-thinking automakers in terms of social media communication and customer consultation as its innovative Fiesta Movement and social media outreach demonstrate. So perhaps it’s no coincidence that the insight being gleaned on the front lines of corporate communication appears to be influencing key decision making in research and development?

Later this week I’ll be to chatting with Ford to explore just how joined up their social thinking really is and to understand exactly how social media is shaping thinking within the company as a whole. Stay tuned.