The title of this post is from an old joke line about Fords.  “You know what Ford stands for,” asked a mechanic I knew many years ago.  “Fix or repair daily,” he replied. Then, he went on with a cackle.  Actually, it’s, “Found on road dead.”  There was another version he had that’s not fit for a family publication.

Of course, he was a Chevy guy.  In fact, he owned around 40 of them. In all fairness, I have a buddy who has always owned Fords and he loves to badmouth competitive offerings from Chevy, Dodge and Toyota.   Despite all the tasteless jokes, Ford may have the last laugh when it comes to competing with General Motors.   This column from automotive columnist Jerry Flint explains [emphasis added]:

Ford’s Focus (Forbes, December 16, 2008, Jerry Flint)

Ford Motor is suffering from guilt by association. The automaker has $15 billion or so in the bank and billions more in credit lines, is not looking for a year-end bailout and still gets splashed with mud. Every day I hear the TV news people, the stars like CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo, lump General Motors, Ford and Chrysler together as facing bankruptcy. In Ford’s case, this is just not true.

Alan Mulally, the chief executive Ford imported from Boeing… has moved smartly since he gave up his wings. He mortgaged assets (for $24 billion) and signed up credit lines two years ago before all the current turbulence.

Ford is actually in pretty good shape it seems.  Why?  Well, the CEO apparently was concerned about cash flow so he mortgaged the company’s assets (reputedly including the blue Ford logo) for a big chunk of cash.   He also sold off a number of car lines to streamline the company. Now, those moves seem to be coming in handly.

He also sold Jaguar, Land Rover, Aston Martin, some of Ford’s Mazda…stake and has put Volvo on the block. You can disagree or agree, maybe some of these operations could still have turned into winning assets, but Mulally decided Ford did not need the problems right now.

Unlike GM, Ford has no surplus car lines, which means it avoids both heavy spending to keep too big a lineup up-to-date and endless lectures from Wall Street know-it-alls who say to get rid of them. Excluding Volvo, which Ford hopes to sell, and Mazda Motor, in which it has only a minority stake, Ford has only two dealership channels in this country: Ford and Lincoln/Mercury.

...Long run, Ford has the ability to grow. For the past two months the Dearborn, Mich., manufacturer has held its own in share against the prior year, while the others slipped. The company even picked up share in November, to 16.4% of the industry sales versus 15.4% a year before. This is a good sign. If GM downsizes, Ford could end up bigger than GM in just a few years.

See also GM & Toyota: A Tale of Two Car Companies.

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