Ford left a few years ago for economic reasons(closing a Jag plant and keeping an F1 team would be cheeky)and I call it the same recession, so I can include anyone since, such as Honda. Ford's withdrawl angered EJ causing him to also throw in the towel.
You don't get to just extend a recession backwards, a recession is a very specific economic term and Ford's pullout had nothing to do with the present economic climate and everything to do with the fact that Ford is run by idiots.
I can extend anything I want backwards
I didn't say it
is the same recession, I just said I
call it the same recession, meaning I can look at their period financial difficulties a couple of years ago and connect it to a poor economy that did exist at the time, and can in a way say that poor state of affairs never went away. A couple of years later it got worse. For my industry it was very poor consistently over all that time and still is.
Ford experienced it's problems 2 years before Chrysler and GM IMO because Chrysler and GM were too arrogant to recognise a problem and did nothing. Ford dealt with its situation by shedding alot of extranneous things such as F1, Aston Martin, etc, and got huge private bank loans, risked all its real estate to develop the Edge. They are lucky the Edge did well. Also(and also lucky) at the time the Fusion, which was new, was paying the bills pretty well.
This was why they were in good enough shape to avoid the need for government ownership. They weren't in good health by any stretch, but they were good enough. GM and Chrysler(rather its non car business owners) had been operating in an irresponsible manner right up to the Wall Street implosion. I think they thought they were invincible. And that's why they went bankrupt.
my theory as to why Ford is now doing better than GM and Chrysler is that GM and Chrysler's lineups are in a state of flux and/or transition or otherwise not relevant to the market, where Ford's seems more coherent, and running just one brand appears to be the only way to profit. At the moment I prefer their lineup although I never swear by one brand.
There are exceptions... For example the Dodge Journey is Canada's best selling crossover.
