this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2025
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If you're one of the largest and oldest car manufacturers in the world and the most "innovative" thing you've managed to do in the last 20 years is rebrand Buick into a young family brand, then you probably need some good competition.
Don’t forget the courage to not support CarPlay/Android Auto … just stupid.
... then you simply have no excuse anymore to exist at all.
Well they wouldn't if not for that hefty bailout by the American taxpayers that they got back in 2008.
Ford was the only one not to take a buyout, FYI.
Ford wouldn't survive BYD either, though.
Greed rules the Western world.
https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2020/07/29/ford-government-loan-department-energy-debt/5526413002/
They still hadn't paid it back in full in 2022.
This is definitely worth mentioning but it's also good to note that it was a loan not a bailout and Ford has repaid it.
Documents filed by Ford show the company owed payments of $591 million in 2020, $591 million in 2021, and $289 million in 2022. As of this year, the loan has been completely repaid. But the compact cars it built with the original loan have since been discontinued.
Ford also received a $9.2B loan for EV battery factory projects from the government.
The compact cars probably being the Fiesta and the Focus. The Fiesta is almost a perfect vehicle. Small but comfy for four decent sized occupants. Great gas mileage. Super reliable motor (I have one with 219,000 miles that's never even needed a tune-up yet--5 speed manual). They put ultra shitty automatic transmissions in them that failed after 35,000 miles so all the good was nullified by that boneheaded decision. Of course you always run the risk of being turned into a grease pancake by bro-dozers all day every day when driving a car in the US.
I like small cars. I have a 2019 Kona and I love the size but I looked at the newer ones because I'm tempted by hybrid or EV. They the newer ones bigger so I decided to just hold onto my current car for a couple more years and then I'll look at a Telo.
Ford has been busy corporate decisioning itself into irrelevance for decades now. The only reason Ford is even still around is the F series.
GM, maker of horribly shitty cars, and yeah, the Corvette, we know. We've seen it, GM.
"do you want to see the C9?"
....of course I would.