By Nina Trentmann

Tim Stone had lots of ideas on how to change Ford Motor Co. when he took over as the car maker's chief financial officer last June, including focusing more on the customer, growing free cash flow and improving the company's performance.

A year later, Mr. Stone is steering the auto manufacturer through an unexpected economic meltdown triggered by the spread of the coronavirus. But he hasn't let go of his goals of making Ford more agile and consumer-friendly so it can better respond to growing competition from rivals such as General Motors Co. and Tesla Inc.

"I am used to an and-environment, not an or-environment," he said in an interview earlier this month. "You have to do it all at once, it is not one or the other."

Ford is reporting earnings on Thursday, after guiding in April that it would post a pretax loss, adjusted for one-time items, of more than $5 billion for the second quarter, compared with a loss of $632 million on the same basis in the first quarter.

GM on Wednesday posted a $758 million second-quarter net loss, with revenue falling 53% to $16.78 billion.

The outlook isn't rosy for car manufacturers. "When the [car] companies look into their finances and try to plan for 2021 and 2022, they are looking at lower revenue and higher costs," said Stephanie Brinley, an automotive analyst at IHS Markit Ltd. Global auto sales are forecast to decline by 20.9% this year compared with last year due to the recession and weaker consumer sentiment, according to IHS Markit.

Mr. Stone has resorted to a crisis playbook during the pandemic that focuses on cash and liquidity. Ford eliminated its dividend, tapped roughly $15 billion in credit lines and issued $8 billion in unsecured debt.

The company also launched an early payment program to help suppliers with their liquidity planning and scrutinized its ongoing projects for areas where it could cancel or delay expenditure. Some of Ford's new technology initiatives, such as an autonomous-vehicle service that was scheduled for next year, have been delayed, as have investments in real estate and information technology. Plans for a Lincoln-brand electric vehicle were scrapped, but the company isn't attributing that decision to the coronavirus.

The crisis caused by the pandemic acted like an accelerated training program for Mr. Stone on how Ford works, said Philippe Houchois, a managing director at investment bank Jefferies Group LLC. Having spent two decades in various finance positions at Amazon.com Inc., followed by a brief stint as CFO of Snap Inc., Mr. Stone is a newcomer to the auto industry.

At Ford, he also is heading the car maker's crisis leadership team. "I sat down and emailed the CEO [ Jim Hackett] saying we need to get focused on this. He said, 'Great, lead it,'" Mr. Stone said. The team met daily in the first weeks of the pandemic. Now they meet weekly via a video call.

Mr. Stone, who took over responsibility for Ford's credit arm from Mr. Hackett in November and has had the company's investment and information technology chiefs reporting to him since February, has more than 10,000 employees working under him. He receives text messages at all hours and often takes calls when he steps onto his Peloton bike at 5:30 a.m.

The pandemic hit Ford in the midst of a turnaround effort that began three years ago when Mr. Hackett took over. The car maker was lagging behind some of its competitors in terms of sales and margins and was struggling to make its European and international operations more profitable.

Mr. Stone was brought in to help with Ford's transformation. The company is reducing the number of its plants, overhauling its lineup of cars and pivoting toward electric vehicles and autonomous driving.

The CFO said last year in an interview he is viewed internally as "the customer guy." At Ford, focusing on the customer means producing more vehicles tailored to individual needs, improving the quality of Ford's cars and delivering them faster, he said. "Imagine if you could order something online and have it delivered the next day," Mr. Stone said last year.

This scenario is still far from reality -- it takes days to build a car and ship it to the dealership.

But Ford customers can now book the Mustang Mach-E, F-150 and Bronco online for pickup at a local dealer.

Mr. Houchois of Jefferies said Mr. Stone's previous tenure at e-commerce giant Amazon stands him in good stead for navigating the changes in the auto sector.

"The car industry is looking for new business models to connect with consumers, and Amazon is a company that has a reputation for being close to the customer," he said.

Mr. Stone also has upgraded Ford's finance function, which employs a few thousand people globally, with new online dashboards for costs and other financial metrics, providing executives across the business with detailed numerical information on a 24/7, self-serve-basis. He has limited the length of documents permitted in meetings and frequently asks his colleagues to read them out aloud in the beginning.

Under Mr. Stone, Ford has also tweaked its earnings guidance to focus on three main metrics -- adjusted free cash flow, adjusted earnings before interest and tax and earnings per share -- when he took office last year. Since the pandemic, Mr. Stone has shifted back to providing more detailed insights.

Mr. Stone's predecessor, Bob Shanks, a Ford-lifer who served as CFO from 2012, was known for detailed descriptions and more technical terms such as "EBIT margin bridge" as a means to explain Ford's profitability.

Ford withdrew its annual guidance earlier this year, and decided to delay the publication of its five-year plan, usually out in July, to December.

Ford's earnings call on Thursday will rely less on scripted remarks, Mr. Stone said. "We want to make sure that our earnings call is as efficient as possible, that we have more time for questions," he said.

He is bound to get plenty.

Write to Nina Trentmann at Nina.Trentmann@wsj.com