Ford, Recycling, And Hybrids

Ford Goodness
Man, we don't understand any of this. We're glad that there are people who can read financial statements and filter out the spin as to what's happening because we sure as hell can't. Did Ford lose money in 2005? What's this per share crap? They're still fucking making the Taurus?!

Leftlane News reports: Ford squeezes out profit, despite weak auto business, U.S. sales. Despite weak auto business? Isn't that what they do? We're not crapping on LLN; we just don't understand this stuff. How do you make a profit if you aren't selling enough cars?

The Street.com reports: Ford Earnings Are Better Than Expected. WTF! Have we been making fun of Ford for no good reason? Well, the reasons were good (uh, Taurus?), but have we been delusional? Hey, some English words we can understand:

All of Ford's profits came from its financial services unit, which includes Hertz through Dec. 21, 2005, the date on which it was sold. Overall, the financial unit earned $881 million before taxes in the fourth quarter, down from $1 billion a year ago. At Ford Motor Credit, pretax earnings were $465 million, down $78 million from a year ago.

Maybe Ford should stop making cars and just do financial services stuff. And every year they should sell Hertz to someone else so they can keep making money. Would that work?

Autoblog reports: Ford's "Way Forward" Plan. This lists a lot of specifics, but there isn't a whole lot Ford is specifically saying. They will make more hybrids (they said that already), Ford will no longer publish an annual earnings guide (that can't be a good thing), and becoming farsighted, customer focused and innovative is the key to Ford's future.

Once we read all of this stuff, we'll give you our thoughts on it (because you are dying to know). Tomorrow at the soonest. We feel for the up-to-30,000 workers (and the management people, too) who will lose their jobs. That's a lot of people.

Ford To Build Car From Old, Rusted-Out Toyota
And it'll still be more reliable! Oh, we kid Ford. The Detroit News reports: Top secret Ford plan: Recyclable vehicles. Is this real? Is it a secret if we publish info about it? We assume it's real, and it's clearly not a secret if we know about it. We just found out that we could have gone stag to our high school prom! It was rough bringing Mom.

Hybridness?
Leftlane News reports: Chevrolet Equinox SS/hybrid spied. Hey! That's cool. We're not fans of SUVs, etc., but, we hear tell the Equinox is a good 'un. And add a bit of hybrid action and some more refinement action... just action, lots of action, and maybe GM will have something to brag about! Please please please, let this be a real attempt at hybrids. Now to get it in the cars! Cobalt! Impala! Some other GM product!

Comments

[AutoNews]

It's funy how Ford and GM release news about hybrid cars right now when they have a lot of financial problems...

[johnny smit]

hi, fords and hybrids :)

its all about the smart cars...
well ZAP smartcars that is..

j.smit
www.talksmartcar.com

[Emery Lane]

What the hell is a Typekey or TypePad account? Whetever it is, I don't have it as far as I know. Maybe my computer knows.

However, let me say that when I rent cars, I often find myself driving a Taurus which is no better or worse than the Grand Marquis I drove time before last. Which I thought was a piece of shit!

At home I drive another Ford product, a Jag XJR and I love it. However, it cost about 3 times as much as a Taurus.

I suppose the problem is that neither of those cars ( Taurus, Grand marquis) is as fine as about any product made by Toyota, Nissan, Subaru, etc. Why should that be so? I don't believe one can blame everything on Unions.

[Chris Sloan]

You make some great points about Ford, beyond just their stupidity about which vehicles to market - Bigger, Bigger, Bigger. They should really look at the appeal of the styling overall, excluding the new Mustang, as most look like a mobile box. Is it any wonder they're loosing ground to Toyota, better looking cars+better gas mileage+same price range=No more Ford.

[Joe aka BigFordFan]

Bob, the news about Ford is hard to follow, but at least it sounds encouraging to those of us who like Ford. It's obvious that the major money loosing proposition at Ford is it's North American Auto production arm, but they have been through this before and by 2008-09 Ford could come out of this shake up stronger and more competative. Some of the encouraging statements were their new "customer focus," meaning they may take more risks in products, like some of the more profitable companies.

Now as for GM's Hybrid Equinox, I'm assuming it's a variation of the new Saturn Vue Greenline Hybrid. Which uses a motor/alternator system that just gets the vehicle rolling when stopped and is a half assed atempt on their part. I read recently that it will get 27 mpg city and 34 highway, and that the system is cheap and simple. Just like GM, to bring out a system like this. They're hoping that they can cash in on the Hybrid phenom and not have to actually invest heavily in the technology. Let's hope they don't use this system on others like the Cobalt, Ion or Equinox/Torent, it can only hurt sales.