Ford's better idea is American
The dirty little secret upon which the Obama regime doesn't want Americans to focus is that Ford Motor Company, a privately-run enterprise, is out-performing its taxpayer subsidized and government-run competition.
With great fanfare and exultation from State-run Media, General Motors (GM) announced last April that it repaid the remaining $5.8 billion in U.S. and Canadian loans it received to stay in business. Glossy advertisements proclaimed, "We repaid the taxpayers in full, with interest, ahead of schedule, because more customers are buying GM vehicles." Huzzah! GM no longer needed an emergency government bailout to stay afloat. However ...
This was of course pure, unadulterated poppycock -- unless you are daft enough to consider paying off taxpayer-funded loans with other taxpayer-funded loans as profit from vehicle sales.
No, the truth is that GM and Chrysler Corporation are still controlled by the Obama regime (as well as the unions, Canada, and Fiat), short-shrifted shareholders and creditors are still unrecompensed, hundreds of dealerships are still shut down and tens of thousands of their employees still out of work, and the American taxpayer still has a tremendous TARP debt burden to bear. Statism at work.
But what of the Ford Motor Company? Is Ford surviving as America's only major, privately-run auto maker that declined to be manipulated by government intervention?
Quality job one
This week, for the first time ever, Ford Motor Company finished ahead of most imported brands in auto quality rankings for mass-market new cars and trucks. Ford ranked No. 1 for quality among mass-market brands. This from the J.D. Power and Associates car review study, considered to be the benchmark of auto quality rankings for U.S. consumers.
J.D. Power reported that Ford, the only U.S. automaker to avoid bankruptcy, taxpayer bailout, and government control, showed some of the biggest gains in auto quality rankings among individual brands, moving into the fifth spot overall. Only luxury brands were rated better, capturing the top four spots: Porsche, Acura, Mercedes-Benz, and Lexus. It is interesting to note that Toyota saw its ranking drop from sixth to 21st.
Reuters suggested that "the results underscore the progress U.S. automakers have made on closing their long-criticized gap in quality with Asian automakers." However, this is disingenuous at best because Reuters chose to include all U.S. automakers -- GM ranked mid-pack out of 33 brands. One must consider the source, as Reuters is certainly not known for its ethical journalism or objectivity.
Running on all cylinders
Ford reported double-digit gains in May; Sales rose 23 percent last month based upon vehicles such as the mid-sized Fusion sedan and its line of F-Series pickup trucks. For the month, Ford sold nearly 200,000 vehicles, marking its sixth straight month of 20 percent-plus sales gains. Thus far this year, Ford has sold nearly 800,000 vehicles.
In fact, of the top ten retail vehicle sales in the U.S. market this May, Ford was number one by more than 15,000 vehicles.
Bailout schmailout.
When businesses are scourged with confiscatory taxation, unrealistic regulatory constraints, and fantasy-world union demands, they wither and die. But the ill health of a business is hardly an end to the misery.
They could become government-run.
Free enterprise rules
Ford CEO Alan Mulally side-stepped bailouts and the loss of corporate control to the statist regime. He maintained liquidity by developing and then strictly following a plan for worldwide corporate streamlining, cost-cutting, union negotiation, and product excellence. As a result, Ford's stock share price is now modestly healthy, more than fifteen times the value of GM's. As GM, Chrysler, creditors, dealers, and stockholders learned, all those billions in bailout teemed with sticky, webby, sociofascist strings attached.
That's why Ford's success is such a great American story -- but anathema to the Obama regime. It is important to remember that what GM did is analogous to you paying off your home mortgage with someone else's credit cards. That is not the American Way.
And is being union- and government-run a long-term solution for GM and Chrysler? Chances are very good that the answer is no. Why? Well, er ... union and government greed and incompetence. Do not be surprised if they soon require another massive influx of hard-earned taxpayer dollars -- or die as they should have done the first time.
Free enterprise, better ideas, hard work, and perseverance -- without officious and unreasonable government meddling -- is how America succeeds. We are a freedom-loving nation of courageous, time-tested innovators and entrepreneurs, not anemic statist lab rats to be wasted away in a maze of bureaucratic bungling. As Americans are now realizing, Obama's sociofascism leads to mediocrity, unimaginable debt, and failure.
Hype and Chains for 134 more days.