Projo Cars Blog

Ford is stepping out of the gloom that has recently overshadowed Detroit's Big Three.

While Chrysler fumbles into a new era of high gas prices without a B-car to its name and General Motors slips to Number 2 behind Toyota, Ford comes in with a profit of $100 million in the first quarter on sales of $43.5 billion.

Sales include those of Jaguar and Land Rover which it recently sold to Tata Motors of India; if those sales are not included, revenues were $39.4 billion.

These numbers compare with a loss of $282 million on sales of $43.0 billion in the first quarter of last year.

That's impressive and real good news for a change.

I recently profiled Rhode Island's two Ford dealerships - Mike Flood's Flood Auto Group in East Greenwich, Narragansett and Wakefield, and the Tasca Auto Group in Cranston and Seekonk. (And I apologize to the Tasca family, whose association with Ford goes back 65 years. Their profile, which appeared in yesterday's paper included a group photo which did not identify them by name. That was a mistake that slipped through the editorial process.)

But in both profiles, I said that Ford seemed to be on a roll in a difficult economic climate, noting that sales of such vehicles as its Edge, Focus, Fusion were holding their own. Indeed, the company recently upped the production of its Focus by 30 percent.

As it happens, The Wall Street Journal profiled Ford yesterday, and made the same point but in much greater detail. Indeed, the headline says it all: "Ford Motor Turnaround Takes Hold."

(It also said the company is mulling the sale of its Volvo unit, having recently sold its Jaguar and Land Rover units to Tata Motors of India, and is possibly dropping the Mercury brand.)

Certainly, Ford's earnings were mixed in certain areas - it posted a loss in North America on lower sales, for example, and Volvo's numbers were down. And it said that the rest of the year will be challenging.

But it reaffirmed its plan to have the turnaround substantially behind it by next year when it expects to return the whole company to profitability.

Good news indeed.

For more information on Ford's earnings, go to the story by the Associated Press.

- Peter C.T. Elsworth

---