Should You Buy A Ford Now?

It seems that American automotive manufacturers are having a tremendously hard time the last few years. Whether you look at it from a marketshare perspective or profit margins or growth rates, all three (or two if you count Daimler Chrysler as a German company) are not doing as well as the Japanese competition.

Recently, Ford seems to have decided not to keep market share at the expense of profit margin and so they will be laying off workers and shutting down plants. Investors have been getting out of the stock of Ford's major supplier as a result.

Ford and GM both have fairly large liabilities in terms of pension plans that are on their books. They both need to fix their cash flow big time.

The real question you have to ask yourself is whether you think that tings will continue to get worse for Ford and GM? I am not yet convinced that the current Ford CEO can do the job. If things do actually get worse, will buying a Ford vehicle be a smart thing? If things were to get worse, do you believe that Ford will provide the same level of service for repairs, parts and guarantees? Will they be trying to save money in operations? Will they raise the costs of replacement parts? Will they lower dealer margins? Will they be treating you, the Ford owner, any different?

I am not worried about whether they will be around as a company and I don't own any of their stock. The worry I have is all the stuff that is in between.