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Ford turns a profit
Good manufacturing news coming out of Michigan this morning:
Ford, the only Detroit automaker to dodge direct government aid and bankruptcy court, surprised investors with net income of nearly $1 billion in the third quarter and forecast a “solidly profitable” 2011.
The automaker said Monday earnings were fueled by U.S. market share gains, cost cuts and the Cash for Clunkers program, which drew flocks of buyers to showrooms this summer.
Topic: Economy, WorldMagBlog
Keywords: Ford
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back to top27 Comments to “Ford turns a profit”
Good for Ford. My wife and I own a Ford pickup truck, which we bought used. I am extremely unhappy with the dealer who sold it to us, but I won’t name them here, as I don’t want to get into trouble.
Although after we got the truck fixed for several thousand dollars, it is running fine. And I don’t blame the national company for one rogue dealer.
This comment is not disrespectful to Christians.
Also, my neighbor, who is a devout Christian, owns a Chevrolet pickup, which also seems excellent.
Your mileage may vary.
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Well good for Ford. Just hope they can stay out of trouble.
Now if the other two would just get their act together…
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They need to sell a good product that will keep customers coming back–not a product that blows up, parts fall off, a death trap, and it bleeds all over the driveway.
They always seem to sell cars that don’t last. I got the feeling they did that so you would have to buy a new one next year.
I got tired of my Ford breaking down. My ex would get mad at me when it did. So I got a Honda right before our divorce. We looked at American and foreign. When I got in that Honda and closed the door it sounded solid. That was it, I knew it was the right car. It was a God thing. That car lasted more than 20 years and was a lot safer than many American cars. (It was still running when we sold it.)
Because of that, my next car (with new husband) was a Honda. I checked out safety first. I have not been disappointed.
Call it unAmerican if you want to, but I have a problem with keeping the union in business. They have shown that they are for themselves, not the employees they supposedly represent.
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Not too long ago I was looking at Chevrolet AVEOs. They are a cute car. I drove an AVEO rental. But again it’s not safe, so it’s not a good investment. And definitely NOT something I would want our daughter to drive. Safety first, cute second.
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Ford did well because of several factors. Namely, that they didnt take bailouts, arent run by the Obama appointed czar, and do not have the overhead that GM does.
Couple that with the fact, that most people dont want to invest in GM and Chysler now due to government take over and lack of stability.
America seems to be speaking that they dont want a govt controlled auto maker to shop from…
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I wounder if this profit is based on the people rejected Obama run car companies.
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Good point Pastor Roy.
How much will be reinvested? How much distributed in dividends? And how much gobbled up by our greedy govt?
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I guarantee that the government will make the unions look like pikers…
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This is better than reading Consumer Reports.
I need to ride the bus more. It’s fairly socialist where I live.
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Thorn — actually, they saw trouble coming long before Obama. Ford’s biggest move was to literally mortgage everything in the company down to its oval logo. This is the cash cushion that allowed them not to go into bankruptcy. But without bankruptcy, they also face some $21B in debt — they still have a rough road in front of them.
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I agree harris, although they could do all that because they had the full control to do so.
“American” car companies were losing sales before the big dip to the Toyota and Hondas.
Has Ford’s sales gone up in comparison lately? Or is this simply the cutting of overhead and restructuring, coupled with poor american competition? I think the cash for clunkers would affect everyone pretty evenly.
I say poor, even though I think Chevy had really brought back a much more quality product the last couple of years. It just hasnt filtered through. It may not ever as long as the general consensus is that its to risky with a government running it.
Got a friend who will be selling his Saturn Sky shortly, cause its only going to drop in value tremendously in the next couple of years.
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“The earnings came despite an $800 million revenue drop. But Ford said it cut costs by $1 billion during the quarter, accomplished through layoffs in North America and Europe, reduced pension and retiree health care costs and improvements in productivity and product development.”
Ah, seems they do have a long road ahead. But their reduction in overhead has been very key.
Thats really what GM and Chrysler should have done awhile ago.
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Generally speaking, if you bought an American car with Cash for Clunker money, you bought a clunker.
But I am happy for Ford. Maybe not all American cars are clunkers. It is sad to see that only failures are rewarded by the government. Ford chose to fend for itself. Good move.
How much of their profits can be attributed to Cash for Clunkers which would have given them an artificial boost last quarter at taxpayer expense. Now car manufacturers are suffering a post-clunker drought. And our grandchildren will be paying for it.
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Xion, News2Me, and Others:
I’m tired of the anti-American car rants. Yep, some have been bad, but many have been pretty good, especially Fords. Don’t forget even some of your Jap cars have had their problems.
I admit I’m a Ford fan, but here’s why:
1984 Tempo, bought new, drove 83,000 miles. Changed the oil, no other maintenance, no problems at all
1988 Bronco II, bought new, drove 187,000 miles, very little maintenance, roughly 22mpg overall.
1998 Explorer, 112,000 miles, it’s tires got recalled when it had
35,000 miles on it. We traded it in the C4C deal with the same Michelin tires on it, in good shape! Minor warranty work (back windshield wiper).
1996 F150, bought used in 2001. Now has 113,000 miles. I’ve spent about $150 in non scheduled maintenance. It still runs like new.
2009 Escape, bought in C4C deal. Has 3500 miles. No problems yet, getting 28mpg in mixed driving.
We also had a 1988 Honda CRX. Bought new, sold with 215,000 miles.
Tired, but still willing! So I like Honda’s too, but all the complaints about American cars over the past 20 years just aren’t warranted. Okay, now somebody tell me you got a lemon, maybe you did, but most of them are just fine.
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Oh, I forgot to mention, in my car rant: it DOES help if you take care of them.
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#15
My Chevy Prism ran very well for a long time. I took care of it pretty well.
Thought actually, it was a Toyata Corolla “tarted” up as a Chevy.
Somehow this may be as bad as “gay marriage.”
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#14 RRBar
I am not anti-American car. I am anti-clunker, which just happens to be an apt description for many American cars. Nothing personal.
Car quality isn’t just about length of life. All of your cars were mere babes compared to mine. My Toyota 4Runner has over 230K miles and I am just starting to break it in. It looks and runs almost as good as the day I bought it.
Try this little experiment. Check your oil just before you go in for an oil change. Is it still full? Is it still as clear as the day it was put in? My oil still never goes black between oil changes.
Here is a little history lesson to explain what I mean. Ford made a car with two transmissions that both met identical specs. One was made in America and one in Japan. Because the Japanese transmission had closer tolerances it was preferred because it was far superior.
American car manufacturers rejected the philosophy of continuous improvement by W. Edwards Deming and so he went to Japan after WWII. The big turn around for Japanese cars was the gas shortage in the 1970s when Americans started looking for something other than gas guzzling power houses that required continuous maintenance.
So, no one is bashing American cars because they are American, but because they are so often inferior to Japanese or German and now even Korean cars in terms of value, quality and durability.
Ford has done some good things though and my hat is off to them. Ford actually asked for Deming’s help in 1981 and they were able to make some serious improvements that showed in their bottom line. Obviously the free market worked. Build good stuff and people will buy it.
GM and Chrysler a different way, asking the government to bail them out every few years because of slumping sales. We should let those American failures take their natural course to the junk heap.
Obama’s philosophy is to artificially stimulate failure over and over. He is the Prince of Failure.
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“GM and Chrysler … a different way” should be “GM and Chrysler went a different way”, that is “the bailout way”.
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Thorn — hard to say if sales per se are up, what is true is that Ford has consistently gained market share, and that is probably the more relevant statistic. The revising projections upward to solidly profitable for 2011 testifies to the company’s conviction that it has made real structural gains.
And the Deming story (Xion) — the auto companies (and much of manufacturing generally) took it on the chin, and deservedly so. That said, the notorious gaps of a generation ago have largely disappeared; bitter as the lessons were, they were nonetheless learned, at least at GM. Quality for Chrysler still lags, and may be a reason that Fiats become the norm for that brand.
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Gee, they managed to do something that my company has done consistently, quarter after quarter, for 113 years, by telling the unions they can go only so far and no farther.
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#19 Good point Harris, but I disagree that the gap is now gone.
I am on the road a lot and rent plenty of cars. A few American cars have been decent (I liked the Mustang convertible), but there is a stark contrast in your average car with the way the door slams, the handling, the features, the sound of the engine, the acceleration. I am tall and can never seem to see the ugly instrument panels without ducking.
Press the accelerator in a Camry or VW vs. a Buick, or Chevy or even a Taurus which isn’t too bad. The American cars will whine and shake to get up to speed like they’re going to fall apart. And they ignore me. When I turn on the lights there is a delay. When I turn them off they won’t go off right away. Some engineer knucklehead thought I would like it that way. Well, I don’t. Cars should behave!
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For those who still hold that “all American cars are junk,” check out the 2010 Cadillac CTS-V. It’s a luxury performance sedan that is fast catching up to the Germans (i.e. BMW, Mercedes, etc.), but it undercuts the price tag of the competition by usually around $20k or more.
There are lots of others, ranging from supercars like the SSC Ultimate Aero and Ford GT to pony cars like the 2010 Mustang (and the GT500) that are showing that American cars are much better than they used to be.
While my dream car is still the Ferrari 599 GTB (and I like the new 458 Italia also) and I like other foreign cars such as the BMW M3, some cars made in the U.S. of A. have made their mark (in a good way).
At the moment, the new CTS-V still holds the record as the world’s fastest production V8 sedan, although that may change with the arrival of the new BMW M5…
OK, enough about cars before I bore everyone.
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About 1966 or 1967 or so I spent a summer on a Chevrolet assembly line. If a bumper fell off your 1967 Malibu, it was probably my fault.
I was offered entry into General Motors Institute and told it was a path into GM management. There were a variety of reasons I said no, but one was that I found the rather mindless bickering between union and management at the time rather depressing and thought no good would come of it.
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Thanks Xion,
I hope you noticed that your complaints about American vehicles were mostly from 25 or so years ago! How long will you hold that against them?? I agree with you that there were definitely some losers in the past, but as I mentioned the Fords I’ve owned since 1984 have all been excellent vehicles. I don’t see how any import could have been better! And I don’t remember the last time I put oil in a vehicle in between oil changes!
You said something to the effect that quality isn’t all about durability. True. But it’s also about low maintenance. Even my
wife’s Honda, which was extremely reliable, had very regular, very
expensive scheduled maintenance. The Fords did not.
You may not be guilty, but I think there’s definitely some anti American bias with much of the car buying public. It’s time to take another look at American products. I think even some of the new Chevy’s are pretty good products. The Equinox sounds great.
And apparently the Malibu is too.
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“what is true is that Ford has consistently gained market share,”
Well yeah, GM and Chrysler have stunk it up though, Ford may just be the lesser of 3 evils and thats good enough to “gain” market share. Has Toyota and Honda and Nissan gained an equal share?
My parents have had a Ford Winstar van since 98 that has had the transmission replaced 3 times :\ Could be related to my mother’s driving, but I doubt it.
My father bought an 05 or 6 Malibu and its done pretty well so far, get 30 plus mpg around town. He’s looking at buyin ga Nissan Titan, because the Ford and Chevy trucks wont fit in his garage…
My 02 Monte Carlo has had a bearing replaced, a sensor hub, and the radiator replaced. Car is at 106k miles. The wheel sensors are a consitant problem it seems, because chevy put too short a harness on it. Silly design flaws…
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#24 I agree RRBar.
Strangely and shockingly even to myself, I am actually very excited about the Chevy Volt and the Ford Reflex which are diesel electric hybrids. What is very unique about these cars is that they are using technology introduced on S-class submarines in 1929.
It doesn’t use a direct drive (coupling engine to wheels), rather it uses a pure electric motor and a diesel engine to run a generator. It is more efficient and no gears are needed. Strangely Chevy claims it will get 230 mpg. That’s just Obama talkin’, but its still cool.
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Will it cost as much as a submarine?
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