Ford made a profit. Yes, you read that right, a car company, and not just that, but an American car company, actually made money in the past quarter. After all the doom, gloom, buy-outs, shotgun marriages, bankruptcies and the like, this is the last thing you’d expect to read, but it sure looks like it’s true.
And add to that that this is Ford Motor Company that we’re talking about. The only car company of “The Big Three” that walked away from the government bailout cash. They took a look at the terms of the deal, and said, ‘No thanks, we think we can make it on our own.’ And damn if they weren’t right.
To further put this into context, realize that in these seemingly austere times, look how Ford has gone about racing. Just the fact that they’re going racing (which far too many knuckle-draggers out there consider to be “frivolous”) says a lot about them, for one thing. But Ford continues to race worldwide in very high profile ways. They almost took down Sebastian Loeb in the WRC (which is probably impossible because he’s so good), they race like crazy in NASCAR (just ask anybody that tries to beat Jack Roush) and they keep turning out door-slammer dragsters left right and center.
Ford ain’t shy, in other words.
And world wide, Ford is selling cars as fast as they can crank them out. They are gaining market-share the way Krispy Kreme customers are gaining on the grim reaper. Ford dropped automotive costs by 1 Billion dollars during the past quarter, which added to the total reduction of spending to $4.6 Billion so far this year alone. That is 0.6 above Ford’s target numbers.
And here’s the really good news. The combination of sales added to the cost savings means that world wide , Ford’s 3rd quarter pre-tax profits came to $1.1 Billion. Yes, billion with a “B”. In profits. In North America alone the pre-tax profit was $357 million. Which gave Ford their first profitable quarter since early 2005. And Ford says they are expecting to be fully profitable by 2011.
Source: The Garage Blog
Photo from Flickr user Refracted Moments
Leave a Reply