Search results matching tag 'Chrysler'

Chrysler may not make another year

Douglas McIntyre — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 14:31:00 GMT

Rumors, credible rumors, are beginning to circulate in the car industry and the automotive press, that Chrysler may not make it another year primarily due to its falling sales and growing financial losses at partner Fiat.

Chrysler sold a 62,197 cars in September, down 42% from the same month last year. The figure was down from 93,222 in August when traffic to dealers was pushed up by the ”cash for clunkers” program.

Chrysler’s problems may only be beginning and, if so, Fiat, the ”managing partner” among Chrysler’s owners may not be able to keep the American company intact.

Chrysler has operated at a disadvantage to the Japanese for some time. That has been true of all three U.S. car companies. Now that each has restructured, each has more leverage against a lower costs base. That should allow General Motors, Ford (F), and Chrysler to make an operating profit even with domestic light vehicles sales running at a rate of only 10 million a year. But, Chrysler still has disadvatages which start with the age of its fleet and extend to the problem that it no longer has enough market share to cover even a lower cost base.

GM has the capital and the daring to offer its cars for a 60-day test drive. There is some financial risk to the action, but GM has enough new models coming to market that the odds of people turning in cars is relatively small.

GM had a hard September with sales down 45% to 156,673, but the new promotion ought to improve its share in October and November. Ford has demonstrated the ongoing strength of its new model line. In September, Ford’s sales only dropped 5% to 114,655. That means that Ford is picking up market share rapidly and some of that is probably coming at Chrysler’s expense.

The Congressional Oversight Panel has already said taxpayers will not see most of the $81 billion that they put into the American car industry. The $14.3 billion put into Chrysler is more and more likely to be lost completely. The biggest single loser if Chrysler cannot survive is the UAW which owns 55% of the company.

The daily management of Chrysler is controlled by Fiat which owns 20% of the U.S. company with options which could take that amount to 35%. Fiat has not put any money into Chrysler, so if the American firm becomes a significant operational or management burden there are very few reason for the Italian company, which has sales troubles of its own in Europe, to stay long term. Fiat lost $254 million in the second quarter, so its board may eventually believe that Chrysler is a distraction and one without a future.

Chrysler is not just up against the traditional competition of its two domestic rivals and Toyota (TM), Honda (HMC), and Nissan. South Korean upstart Hyundai is posting sales improvements even as the car market remains weak and in September it posted a sales increase of 27% to 31,511, about half of Chrysler’s sales for the month. Hyundai’s strength is in small fuel-efficient cars, the market where Chrysler needs to find success with its products and those from Fiat.

At this point, the Chrysler product line is still dominated by mid-sized sedans, SUVs from Jeep, minivans, and pick-ups like the Dodge Ram. The company has no real product in the alterative energy/hybrid segment. Chrysler’s domestic market share in September 2008 was 11.1%, according to Edmunds. Based on sales figures released by the industry today, that share is now closer to 7.5%

Even Chrysler’s traditional rivals are doing well despite a harsh market. Nissan sold 55,393 light vehicles last month, down only 7% from a year ago. Toyota sold 126,015, down12.7% and now has sales which are about double Chrysler’s. Honda’s sales for the month were 77,229 cars and light trucks. The number was down 20%, but it means Honda was still very likely to have picked up share in the American market.

Chrysler sales are now running at the rate of 750,000 a year. It probably does not have the capital to wait through another year of low US car sales with a market share that is almost certainly to stay below 8%. It does not have models tailored to the current market tastes. Chrysler is going out of business. The company just hasn’t made it official.

Top Stocks blogger Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 24/7 Wall St.

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Jon Markman — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:49:00 GMT

No wonder the unemployment rate is so high. The new head of Chrysler has top jobs at five separate companies himself.

Sergio Marchionne, the new hands-on CEO at Chrysler Group LLC in Detroit, is also the CEO of Fiat SpA in Turin, Italy. And he's the chairman of CNH Global NV, an Amsterdam-based farm equipment company. And he's vice-chairman of the Swiss bank UBS AG. And he's also chairman of SGS S.A., a goods-inspection company in Geneva.

The dude is a one-man executive temp agency. I guess he doesn't like to be bored.

Bloomberg reports that the Canadian-Italian exec sleeps only three to four hours a night, often on the corporate jet; works every weekend; and takes only five days of vaction per year. The news service says he travels with a small backpack containing two BlackBerry devices and two iPhones -- one each for Chrysler, Fiat, CNH and UBS, plus a spare for emergencies.

Chrysler took a $15 billion bailout from the U.S. government, and now has two years to turn its fortunes around. No time for napping on that schedule. Bloomberg reports that the Detroit-based automaker must sell 1 million cars in the United States to break even, which is not considered likely even though it sold 2 million as recently as 2007.

For every additional 100,000 cars it can sell, Chrysler can make $1 billion in profit, according to the news service. So it would need to sell an extra 1.6 million cars above the break-even level just to climb out of the $16-billion hole it dug last year.

To get there, Marchionne has already acted quickly. According to news reports, he threw out 23 longtime unit managers the day he took over this summer, promoting 23 younger underlings to take their place. Plus he has ended some plant visits by firing all of its top managers and promoting the people under them. Sounds like he's one of those, "Nice to meet you, good bye," kind of guys.

Times like these bring out the gallows humor. Observing that if Marchionne doesn't rejuvenate Chrysler it won't get another chance, Bloomberg quotes a board member as saying, “A patient can only be operated on so many times before he dies.”

If that happens, at least we won't have to worry about seeing the boss hit the unemployment line.

A 'clunkers' sales flurry

Kim Peterson — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:49:00 GMT

Don't be fooled by the headlines. Yes, the cash-for-clunkers program helped Ford (F) boost sales a remarkable 17% in August from a year ago. It was the first time since 2006 that sales went up for two months straight, The New York Times reports.

For a brief few weeks, the auto industry sprang back to life. People flooded into dealerships, buying cars into the wee hours of the morning and taking advantage of rebates of as much as $4,500.

Bing: More on cash-for-clunkers

But as soon as cash-for-clunkers ended, dealerships turned back into ghost towns. “Dealers are saying as soon as the program ended everything stopped dead,” industry consultant John Casesa told Bloomberg.

Don't expect next month's sales to be as cheery. And in fact, analysts were somewhat disappointed by Ford's August total. They had expected sales to be higher, somewhere in the range of a 33% to 39% increase.

So either the analysts were too optimistic, or cash-for-clunkers wasn't as successful at boosting sales as some had thought. Nearly 700,000 buyers took about $2.88 billion in rebates, MarketWatch reported.

The biggest sellers in the program were foreign cars: the Toyota Corolla and the Honda Civic. American cars were at the top of the trade-in list, and included the Ford Explorer SUV and the F150 pickup (pictured).

Ford was the first of the Big Three to report August sales. Chrysler is expected to disclose a 15% drop in sales in August, the Associated Press reports. Analysts expect that General Motors' (MTLQQ) sales fell 16%.

Toyota and Honda were expected to see the first sales increases this year, with sales up an estimated 8.9% and 3.2%, respectively.

At the time of this writing, Kim Peterson did not own shares of any companies mentioned.

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Relocate GM to China

Douglas McIntyre — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 10:54:00 GMT

GM says it will sell 1.4 million cars in China this year. It sold about 180,000 in the US in July. The critical difference between its costs in the two markets is that many of GM’s Chinese vehicles are made in facilities owned by joint ventures with local car companies. Others are produced in manufacturing facilities with low labor costs. And, GM’s sales are growing in China and dropping in the US.

GM’s expenses in it home market may be falling because it has gone through Chapter 11. Unfortunately, the firm’s sales in its home market were down about 20% last month, so its restructuring cost improvements may end up doing little good.

Bing: General Motors

The No.1 US auto company might be better off setting up joint ventures with other large car companies with factories in America to produce its vehicles. Ford (F), Toyota (TM), and Chrysler already have substantial manufacturing capacity some of which is underutilized.

It becomes more clear as each quarter passes that GM’s future is in Asia and Latin America. The old world car markets of Europe and the US have not only shrunk considerably during the recession; they may not be coming back.

Americans have learned that one of the best tools to help them live more frugally is to keep their cars an extra year or two. Repairs and maintenance are less expensive than a $30,000 purchase. Banks will not give them car loans in many cases. Money is too tight and financial firms are running so frightened that they are close to shutting down lending to even credit worthy borrowers.

GM’s US operations may never recover to the sales levels that they enjoyed just a few years ago. That means more cost cuts are in the wings. There are still too many auto plants in America. GM can take advantage of that. It just needs to find a suitable partner.

Top Stocks blogger Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 24/7 Wall St.

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GM tries to pitch Camaro to gay men

Catherine Holahan — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:04:00 GMT

The models lean seductively over the hood of the 2010 Chevrolet Camaro, wearing only tiny yellow underwear emblazoned with the car's logo. Grasping a wash cloth, they rub down the car until it sparkles as an unseen cameraman asks about the car.

The videos, broadcast on YouTube, use sex appeal to sell Camaros to guys. Only the models aren't women, they're men.

The racy commercials are part of a new advertising campaign targeting gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.

In addition to highlighting the Camaro, the online videos illuminate a new challenge for General Motors and rival Chrysler: marketing the same car model to different audiences.

Before the current restructuring, the car companies had enough models to make "a car for every purse and purpose," as long-time GM-president Alfred P. Sloan famously said. But not anymore. GM once had 11 brands, including international ones. It plans to shed or spin-off at least four. That means instead of having several cars for soccer moms in various income brackets and several other cars aimed at, say, young, childless men, the car companies must market the same car to both groups.

"We are trying to broaden the appeal," said John Fitzpatrick, marketing manager for the Camaro.

The Camaro, for example, is a model that GM hopes to market as an affordable muscle car for the masses. GM is using the new Transformers movie - a film about machines that turn into robots based on a popular comic book - to market the sports car to young people and hip parents. The company is also marketing the car in the Middle East with a message focused on performance and power, says Fitzpatrick. The car will eventually need to be sold in Europe as well, a very different market that tends to prize features such as fuel-efficiency.

In the U.S., GM has tacitly supported online campaigns by homosexual Camaro fans. The YouTube videos were created by a Camaro enthusiast to promote "Gay Day at the Movies," a Los Angeles event featuring a screening of the new Transformers movie. Chevrolet supplied the vehicle used in the video, said company spokesman Adam Denison.

Fitzpatrick acknowledges that appealing to so many different groups with the same car is challenging. The Internet has enabled folks in different countries to see advertising campaigns intended for different audiences.

"It is a lot more difficult to do in today's day and age because of what the Internet can do," said Fitzpatrick, adding that focusing on the technology has helped broaden the Camaro's appeal.

So far, GM is pleased with how the Camaro campaigns are going. The 2010 model, which hit dealerships in April, has sold the most vehicles in its class, said Fitzpatrick. More than 9,000 Camaros were sold in June and GM is working to fill orders for another 25,000 vehicles.

Toyota gains upper hand with Prius

Douglas McIntyre — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:01:00 GMT

Toyota (TM) has booked 180,000 domestic orders for its latest Prius hybrid in the first month it has been on the market. There is no reason to think the car will not do extremely well in America. It is considered to be the best hybrid made by any car company and has sold well in the U.S. since it was first introduced.

With the third-generation Prius on its way to America, many of the auto plants of The Big Three are idle and the domestic manufacturers are hardly in a position to produce tens of thousand of hybrids during the rest of 2009. Even if they could, their products don’t have the reputation of the Prius.

The trouble that General Motors (GMGMQ) and Chryler will have fielding competitive products says a great deal about the problems with the government bailout. Even though the bankruptcies are moving quickly, the process of cutting billions of dollars of costs, closing plants, and shuttering dealerships will hurt the domestic industry as the economy begins what appears will be a slow recovery. GM and Chrysler might have been better prepared for the 2010 model year if the government had used its axe a little more slowly and kept a few more people on the job and idled fewer plants.

The push to make Detroit profitable overnight won’t work and it may well backfire. There is nothing wrong with losing money for a year or two if it is done based on strategic decisions to gain market share. The way GM and Chrysler are now structured, they will offer fewer brands and won’t have the kind of product development budgets which will allow them to put out large numbers of truly competitive, next-generation cars.

Detroit has cut to the bone just as some of Japan’s best products, with the Prius out in front, are about to attack the American market.

Top Stocks blogger Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 24/7 Wall St.

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Chrysler: Better off dead?

Douglas McIntyre — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:09:00 GMT

The government was successful when it warned that Chrysler might be forced into liquidation if the Supreme Court delayed its Chapter 11 process by more than a few days. But it's not clear that liquidation would have been a bad result.

Fiat -- which, as part of the group taking over the best of Chrysler’s assets, will become the de facto operating partner -- wrote to the court that if the sale isn't completed soon, "there can be no assurance that a replacement transaction could be structured and agreed that would preserve any aspect of Chrysler as a going concern.” The Justice Department said in its filing that delaying the Chapter 11 process would not be in the best interests of either debtors or the public. It is not entirely clear why that was true.

The arguments for keeping Chrysler on its present path through Chapter 11 have been based, at least in part, on the premise that the car company’s best assets are not worth very much. That is entirely untrue. The company sold more than 79,000 vehicles last month. That was down 47% from the previous year. Chrysler sold over 60,000 trucks for the month.

Chrysler still has roughly 10% of the domestic market. Volkswagen, the largest car company in Europe, has coveted more market share in the U.S. The Koreans have been aggressively working on raising American sales. Hyundai certainly has the capital to buy a piece of Chrysler. It would have to keep open many dealers, keep and perhaps improve factories, and would certainly continue to employ thousands of Chrysler workers.

A liquidation of Chrysler may well have been bad for some creditors who might have gotten less than the 29 cents-per-dollar of secured debt that they will receive under the current arrangement. Liquidation may not favor the United Auto Workers’ interests. That does not mean selling the company off in parts would have been an unmitigated disaster.

The Treasury has been operating under the impression -- and has given the public the impression -- that the failure of the banks and the demise of General Motors and Chrysler are clearly against the best interests of taxpayers who are having the pleasure, currently, of putting hundreds of billions of dollars into these failing operations, money that they might otherwise keep for paying debts or putting into savings. The other option that taxpayers might like to have is to see the national deficit brought down because the government is not pouring capital into troubled enterprises.

Chrysler is, by many accounts, losing $100 million in cash a day. The taxpayers may want to walk away from the privilege of covering those costs and others like it at struggling American.

One of the arguments that the Administration makes for putting money into the car and financial industries is that it saves jobs. A look at the number of auto workers who will be fired, the number of dealers that will be closed and the number of bank employees who have already lost their jobs due to restructurings and consolidations begs the question of how many more positions are at risk. A bank in trouble is still a bank that may be purchased or at least have its assets purchased. Banks need employees. They cannot be run by machines. The same, in most cases, is true of car operations.

It is more certain that tax revenues will be lower than expected this year than that every single worker at Chrysler will lose his or her job. It is more certain that the deficit will be much higher than forecast and that America will have to borrow more money than expected. It may not be until next year or the year after when federal taxes will need to be raised to pay for the honor of being a US citizen. All the money being borrowed will push up interest rates. Taxpayers will have the chance to thank their government for that as well.

The country is close to a year into the federal government’s great restructuring of its financial and industrial base. It has not gone as planned, and it has not gone as well as planned. Most signs point to the fact that the money being given to the Detroit will not be enough. The jury is out on whether banks will require more capital.

Americans will be able to say that they own a part of two large car companies and some of the world’s largest banks. That and $3 worth of gas will allow them to drive about 20 miles before the tank reads “empty.”

Top Stocks blogger Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 24/7 Wall St.

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When companies go bankrupt: know your options

Minyanville — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:21:00 GMT

With General Motors (GMGMQ) Chapter 11 filing, this is a suitable time to discuss what happens to the options when an underlying company declares bankruptcy.

It's traditional for existing shareholders to lose 100% of their investment when a company becomes bankrupt - even when there are assets of value. Stockholders are at the end of the line, and those assets go to others. Think K-Mart: After its bankruptcy, it was suddenly "discovered" that their real estate was worth a great deal of money, and the "new" K-Mart stock soared. The original shareholders were left with nothing.

Call Options Are Kaput

Once bankruptcy is declared, the stock is worthless - and so are all call options. The stock is usually de-listed from the stock exchanges, but continues to trade in the over-the-counter (OTC) market. If you wonder why it trades, or why anyone would pay anything for the shares, those are good questions.

Anyone who's short stock has won his/her wager. But the short position remains in the investor's account. The easiest way to eliminate that position is to buy the shares. Thus --assuming the broker cooperates and charges a minuscule fee -- it's worth it for investors to pay a small fraction of one penny per share just for the convenience of exiting the position. If you're short stock, try to negotiate a low commission for covering those shares.

Put Options Are Golden

Put options become worth the value of the strike price, and that's the maximum possible value they can attain. In other words, the GM July 2 put is worth $2 (or $200 per contract). All time value is lost, and every put with a strike price of 5 is worth $500.

Assuming GM options continue to trade, there's very little chance you can sell puts at their full value because there's no incentive for anyone to pay that price; there's nothing to gain for the person who buys your options. Thus, you can anticipate that the bid will be less the option's full value. As a put owner, you don't have to accept that bid; you can offer at any price you choose. But you should be reasonable, and you shouldn't ask for more than the strike price. Keep in mind that for every option bought, an option is sold. Thus, it's possible that some investor who's short puts may be willing to pay the full intrinsic value for the convenience of eliminating the position from his/her account. Don't count on being able to find such a buyer. The only incentive for buying the options prior to expiration is to buy the puts for less than they're worth.

If you're willing to accept a penny or 2 less than full value, you probably can sell your puts. But because the stock is worthless, those who own shares are often willing to accept anything for them. Thus, you may be able to buy shares at a small fraction of one penny per share. If you can do so -- and if the cost of commissions doesn't raise the price too high --buy stock (100 shares per put) and then exercise the puts. This is one of those rare situations in which it may be better to exercise than sell the options.

A put owner doesn't have to do any of these things; he or she is entitled to wait until the options expire, then buy stock (if price is low enough) to cover the short position. However, there's no reason to wait for expiration to convert your options to cash.

The Options Clearing Corp (OCC)

I haven't yet been able to verify this, but when I called the OCC, the person with whom I spoke said a recent rule change covers these situations. He said that when a company is bankrupt, the stock is declared "dead" and all ITM options (obviously no calls are ITM) are cash-settled.

That means there's no need to sell the puts or buy the stock. You can exercise and collect full value for the puts. That's good news for put owners. But before you act on this, please verify that it's true: Ask your broker, an options exchange, or better yet, the OCC (email: options@theocc.com), whether these options are indeed cash-settled.

Top Stocks blogging partner Todd Harrison is founder & CEO of Minyanville.com. This post was written by Minyanville Contributor Mark Wolfinger.

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The real damage from GM bankruptcy: Layoffs

Catherine Holahan — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 23:35:00 GMT

General Motors' (GM) long-anticipated bankruptcy announcement on Monday didn't send investors running from the markets. If anything, they responded with relief to the news that GM would file for Chapter 11. The Dow actually rose 221 points as the storied automaker wiped out shareholders and erased much of the $172 billion it owed creditors.

But GM's bankruptcy could yet send the rallying market into reverse.

Though the $30 billion in taxpayer money granted by the Obama administration saved GM from liquidation, it didn't solve the automaker's two main problems: too much production, too few buyers. To address those, GM will lay off tens of thousands of employees in the next 30 to 60 days and cause hundreds of thousands more to lose their jobs. Those layoffs, in turn, will likely fuel increases in weekly unemployment claims -- dragging down the economy and potentially delaying any 2009 recovery.

"There is a big potential hit to the economy," says Art Wheaton, an industry labor expert at Cornell University. "A typical assembly plant has a multiplier effect of 10 jobs . . . a lot of these folks are going to go immediately to the state unemployment line."

As many as 1.3 million jobs could be lost this year related to GM and Chrysler's bankruptcy restructuring effort, according to the Center for Automotive Research. Some of those would stem from plant closings. Many more would result from GM and Chrysler slashing the number of their dealerships and cutting production, leading to fewer sales for parts suppliers and manufacturers.

In a news conference following the bankruptcy filing, CEO Fritz Henderson said GM would lay off nearly 15% of its salaried North American work force, more than 10,000 people, in the next two months. It will also close another 2,100 dealerships, likely eliminating more than 100,000 jobs in the process, says Wheaton.

"We will close more plants and reduce hours," Henderson said.

The new, leaner GM will have about 40,000 hourly employees by 2010, Henderson said. That's about 21,000 fewer hourly employees than GM had at the end of 2008.

Chrysler's restructuring efforts will also pile ex-workers and dealership employees onto the unemployment rolls. Chrysler is eliminating nearly 790 dealerships in advance of a June 9 deadline. Those dealerships employ about 40,000 people.

President Obama has acknowledged that GM's bankruptcy -- though better than worst-case scenarios for the company, its employees and taxpayers -- will swell the ranks of the unemployed.

"Building a leaner GM will come at a cost," Obama said. "It will take a painful toll on many Americans who have relied on General Motors throughout the generations."

Speaking directly to the Americans who rely on the auto industry for a paycheck, he added:

"I know you have already seen more than your fair share of hard times. I will not pretend the hard times are over. Difficult days lie ahead. More jobs will be lost. More plants will close. More dealerships will shut their doors and so will many parts suppliers."

Investors know the layoffs are coming, as sure as they knew that GM and Chrysler were heading for Chapter 11. What's less clear is whether investors have truly factored in how the rise in joblessness will impact the broader economy and the eventual recovery.

Recently, many investors have bought stock on signs that the worst is over. They have pinned their hopes on positive trends such as declines in weekly unemployment claims. Just last week, the market rose after the U.S. Labor Department announced that initial unemployment claims fell for the second straight week -- dropping 13,000 to 623,000.

The impact of GM and Chrysler's restructuring efforts on the job market could reverse that trend. Such a negative turn around could spook investors, driving them from the market.

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Can Ford keep its head above water?

Douglas McIntyre — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:34:00 GMT

Chrysler is well on its way through the Chapter 11 process. The media has pointed out that even if everything goes as planned, Chrysler has a line of vehicles that desperately needs a facelift. The company will also have to deal with the time difference between where the workers are in Detroit and where the bosses are in Italy.

General Motors (GM) has lined up most of the support it needs to enter Chapter 11. With the US government as its primary owner and nearly endless access to capital, it is hard to imagine how anything could go wrong. It is a bad sign that GM’s market share in most of the places where it operates around the world fell in the first quarter. The US was no exception. The No.1 US car company may have to deal with a domestic vehicle market that will only support sales of 10 million units a year and a market share that is below 20% and falling.

One of Ford’s (F) largest suppliers, Visteon, will also make a trip to bankruptcy court. Ford it giving Visteon debtor-in-possession financing. Visteon was a part of Ford until it was spun out in 2000.

Despite that grim backdrop, the No. 2 US car company insists it has the cash to both bail out Visteon and keep its own head above water even with ongoing losses. But Ford admits that trouble with its suppliers could become increasingly expensive. In its last 10-Q the company wrote “it is reasonably possible that our costs to ensure an uninterrupted supply of materials and components could be higher than our present planning assumptions by a material amount.”

With all of the news coverage that GM and Chrysler are getting it is hard to remember that Ford lost $2.3 billion in the first quarter of the year and only had $24.8 billion on its balance sheet. A conversion of convertible notes has improved Ford’s finances since March 31. Revenue for that period was down to $21.4 billion from $39.1 billion in the same period a year ago.

Ford faces two problems, and it is possible that it will not be able to solve either of them. The firm’s US market share in the first quarter was only 13.9%. That is down from 15% in the first quarter of 2008. Ford cannot afford for that figure to go any lower. The large Japanese and Korean manufacturers will use their balance sheets to make certain that product development and efficient operations give them an ongoing edge in costs and quality.

Ford also faces competition which it might well deem as unfair from GM and Chrysler. They will be free of many of their costs after bankruptcies and government assistance. The Administration will be tempted to throw good money after bad if its two wards do not meet their projections. Ford will not have access to that kind of funding if it stays with its pledge to keep its hands out of the government’s pockets.

Ford cannot avoid the fact that the auto parts industry is in as much or more trouble than the large manufacturers. That is not news to anyone who reads the papers, but the trouble is becoming more acute each month that the auto market does not improve and with every call from the car companies asking for more price concessions. A breakdown of the auto supply chain will hurt every car company in America, but Ford may not have access to capital to ride out a long interruption.

Ford has been hailed a bit of a miracle company, the one US manufacturer that has been able to stand on its own. It took the risk of refinancing its balance sheet two years ago when the action was not popular. The gamble paid off. Now Ford has to do something that it may not be capable of doing. It has to increase its piece of the US car market during a period when some of its suppliers cannot ship parts.

Top Stocks blogger Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 24/7 Wall St.

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