Last week, once again, the big three automakers went to Washington to beg for money.  Actually, that's not exactly true.  GM and Chrysler both went to Washington to beg for money, while Ford went to secure loan guarantees, which is a bit different.  You see Ford is a company that has realized in the last few years that they're in trouble.  That is a stark difference from GM and Chrysler, which once the economy tanked, they realized that they were completely hosed.  Up until then, they thought everything was fine.

Ford has been in a restructuring cycle for the past two years.  They hired a new CEO from Boeing, who has a very simple goal.  Instead of overproducing to make the numbers look good, but being stuck with the financial mess later, he's going to take Ford and make them a leaner, meaner, and more intelligent company.  He is going to do this by reducing their output to meet actual market demand.  It sounds almost too simple, but for various reasons, the old strategy in the automotive world is to overproduce to make your quarterly numbers look good.  Even if people aren't actually buying your cars.  Then, tie up all the money in your financing operations and make it look like you're making money.  When in fact, you're really not.

It's too bad that Ford is getting lumped in with the other two car companies as "one of the big three". while they are one of the big three, they are two years into their restructuring.  And if it wasn't for this recession, they would've hit profitability next year.  As it stands now, they are likely to make money in 2010.  That's a big difference from General Motors and Chrysler threatening bankruptcy if they don't get money yesterday.

The real sad thing is that even though Ford is the best, even if General Motors or Chrysler were to go out of business it would hurt Ford tremendously.  Ford relies on the same parts manufacturers that everyone else does.  If Chrysler or GM were to go under, that would take down the whole auto parts industry potentially as well.  The unintended consequences would be that Ford and other companies would have to find a way to rescue the auto parts companies.

It's a pretty ugly time for American automakers, but one thing is clear: Ford has a plan.  You can't say that about General Motors and Chrysler.  Sure, GM has their Chevy Volt that they're preparing, but that won't save Chevy.  At this point, I'm not sure if anything will.  They have too much junk on their books and need to be willing to cut.  Companies like Pontiac, Saturn, and maybe even Buick.  These are tough times, and if these automakers don't act, they'll go under and take all the jobs with them.