Ford – Don’t call it a comeback!
Fast Tube by Casper
This video was not created or authorized by Ford Motor Company.
From Motofinity’s blog:
Watch TV lately? You can’t escape the latest marketing blitz by a resurgent Chrysler or General Motors. Spots follow the same general theme:
“The big three are back! Detroit’s shaking things up again!” So much is wrong with those two statements.
First, Ford never left, and we’ve whipped up a commercial to answer Eminem and “Chevy Runs Deep,” since it seems that Ford is practicing a lot of discretion on the matter.
Second, don’t forget that Ford never took part in accepting loans. General Motors and Chrysler did and it isn’t the first time.
Chrysler: Chrysler is no stranger to “shyster” loans. Lee Iacocca got money back in ’79 to help keep the automaker afloat. He claimed that $1.2 Billion never cost the tax payers any money. This of course, is pretty much a lie. Chrysler never did declare “bankruptcy” – they just renegotiated their debts and forced banks to take incredible losses. You know… Chapter 11, also known as the last stop before being bankrupt. Indirectly, those losses cost us all.
For our generosity, the nation got a decade of K-Car variants and a renaming of the tired D-Series pickups (debuted in ’72) to “Ram.” Flash forward to 2008 and the government bails them out again, so they can sell themselves to the Italians. It’s the bargain of the century, so far. The next time Chrysler can’t figure out how to make cars or do business, the Italian government can take care of them. We also get the Fiat 500 – a much better trade than the K car.
GM: Then there’s General Motors. They hide the truth about their loan payback, and it’s not the first time they’ve nearly gone bankrupt. At least they’ve kept making the Corvette.
Neither of these companies is making a comeback. You can’t make a comeback when you get bought by another company or go bankrupt to be absolved of your debts and re-emerge as a “new” company.
Ford doesn’t have to make a comeback – because it has been here for 108 years. Ford’s lineup is the sharpest it’s been in decades, and this is due to prescient leadership, from Alan Mulally down.
Don’t get us wrong, we’re excited about “Imported from Detroit” errr Auburn Hills, which is sort of like someone from LA saying they’re from Compton. But let’s see if in ten years, we’re back again with the “too big to fail” bailout requests. For now we’ll put our stock in Ford and hedge our bets with GM. Dan Akerson, current CEO of GM, is setting up a company full of Yes Men. That might be ok, but to our eyes it looks like impending disaster. Meanwhile, you can’t argue with the success of Ford’s CEO Alan Mulally.
Its clever, and Ford products are selling effortlessly, but the company still has a heap of debt.
The *ONLY* reason Ford didn’t take any money is because the CEO was smart enough to see the writing on the wall and mortgage *EVERYTHING* to the hilt so they’d be liquid enough to ride it out. Ford is the equivalent of a typical middle-class consumer in the USA – living in a huge house they can’t really afford with credit card debt up to their ears and only one layoff for furlough away from going under.
It wouldn’t take much of a screwup at this point for Ford to end up begging for money from the government. One big recall campaign, like the one with the Ford Exploder, er, Explorer, would be plenty to send them begging to be able to make their mortgage payments.
That’s the great thing about good leadership – having the foresight to see the road ahead. And I completely agree, Ford’s recovery is very, very fragile. Out of control inflation or additional economic instability could send it right to the shitter.
They get a lot of credit for avoiding bankruptcy and raising money the old-fashioned way instead of empowering the UAW and screwing over bondholders with a government-managed bailout.
All three took TARP money through their finance arms.