When will Ford go bankrupt?

I'm not a Ford's fan. Albeit, I'm surrounded by them. Ford is going no where -- load up and give to your kids.

 

F is a buy company
anytime from 6 Bucks
to 14

GM as well (Now correcting to 19 $)

then up again to 43

 

are you kidding me, the mustang is ugly already, do they have to make it even uglier...

 

I think this is to compete with the DODGE MAGNUM. Not going to work though.

 

Ford Death Watch 21: We’re Number Three!
By Matthew Neundorf
December 26th, 2006

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/?p=2841

The average American car buyer is completely unaware of Ford’s financial troubles. They don’t know Alan Mulally from Bertie Ahern. They don’t know that Ford’s taken out The Mother of All Bank Loans, mortgaging everything up to and including the company logo. They don’t know the automaker’s got three years to avoid annihilation. But the day Toyota overtakes Ford as America’s number two carmaker, the U.S. consumer will get a multi-media wake-up call. The psychological damage will be profound. Not that Ford sees it that way.

“Our focus is on getting our business back on a solid footing to return to profitability,” George Pipas pronounced. “Any talk about sales ranking is little more than a distraction." That’s a strange comment coming from a man holding the title “Chief Sales Statistician, Ford Motor Company.” But Pipas has a point. Why worry about Toyota’s rise to the top when you’re fighting to stay alive?

Seven years ago, Dearborn’s Darlings were worth just over $80b. This year, Ford’s market cap stands at $13b. Although the company has topped-up its cash reserves with $26b of newly leveraged liquidity, it's set to toss $17b of that into the fire over the next three years. Will it be enough? Ford Flack Oscar Suris claims the more fully funded Blue Oval is perfectly positioned to handle the day-to-day challenges of being number three. Suris insists that neither a recession nor “any other event” (wind, sleet and snow?) could force the freshly flush Ford to flounder.

John Novak of Morningstar Inc., ain’t buying it. Like any sensible auto industry analyst, Novak insists that Ford’s survival depends entirely on its ability to generate cash through improved sales and profit ratios. Without a new cost-cutting UAW contract and substantial regrowth in its market share, Billy Ford's mob will be hard pressed to service the family firm's debt, never mind pay off the principal.

To keep the bankers at bay and the coffers at capacity, Ford is staking its short term future on the new Edge. The Blue Oval’s blitzing the American public with $100m in edgy Edge advertising. And why not? The sharp-looking crossover is FoMoCo's only shot at much-needed, long-overdue new product buzz. To add timbre to that tone, Dearborn is cranking up its marketing machine to new heights.

This latest advertising onslaught owes its genesis (genius?) to The Way Fordward Version 1.0. Flying in the face of all the badge-engineered inbreeding polluting the gene pool of Ford's extended family of products, the company has decided it’s all about "Brand DNA." They're going to (re)define their soon-to-be-decided number of divisions, create products that embody these new, more coherent brand values, and then sell the vehicles to people who, um, want them. The Edge campaign is designed to build on– OK, "initiate" this not-so-novel concept.

The Glass House Gang are pitching the cross border crossover in every conceivable medium, to every imaginable market, in every possible language (even “Spanglish”). Rolling Stone gets a centerfold, NBC’s Las Vegas gets product [out-of-]placement, urban skyscrapers get hallucinatory projections and Edmunds gets richer. Despite the ubiquity, Ford has some human DNA in its sights: single men and women in their mid-thirties with an active lifestyle (codenamed "Phil" and “Mia”).

Celebrities ranging from Korean soap star Ahn Jae Wook to Beyonce Knowles will pocket large checks to push their fan base over– I mean into an Edge. Ballers n’ playas tuning into to the Steve Harvey show will hear Grammy nominee Kelis’ (pronounced “Kuh-Leese”) musical campaign contribution: “Push it to the Edge.” Jeri Ward, Ford Edge Marketing Manager, sees the hip hop artist as “the perfect spokesperson for the urban Edge campaign… she has a bold style that breaks the rules.” Apparently, the lady whose milkshake brought all the boys to the yard “prefers bold designs.” So sending them to a Ford dealer should be a piece of cake.

Whether or not Phil, Mia and their hip-hop lovin' friends elevate the not-so-bling Ford Edge to stuntin' 'Sclade status, FoMoCo's crossover is sailing straight into a consumer headwind. The U.S. housing market is in its first full year decline since the Great Depression. After years of cash-on-the-hood and no interest loans for anyone with a pulse, the demand for new vehicle financing is drying up– even as Ford’s middle class mid-market buyer finds that expendable income is becoming as scarce as storage space on Ford dealers’ lots. Industry mavens CSM Worldwide predict that Billy's Boyz will bear the brunt of a nine-year, 16.2m unit low in auto sales.

In short, the Edge has got to sell while the selling’s good. The New York Times predicts that Toyota will scoop America's number two sales slot next February. On that fateful day, American car buyers will know something’s very wrong over at Ford. Tipping point or no, selling a Ford is about to get a LOT harder.

 

Ford dropped another bomb...

<img src="http://img206.imageshack.us/img206/8823/1100zj9.jpg"

 

Yea, I am kicking myself as too why I did not buy a few thousand shares at around 6.40. a few weeks back....

 

Don't worry... they'll adapt.

 

Is F a screaming short like the replay of the GM / Nissan / Renault merger rumor?

 

In Black would look like Batman's Car
LOL