GM's and Ford's Future Looks Bright -- You Can Bet on It

By Warren BrownSunday, January 1, 2006; G02

I am naturally optimistic, and that has been my salvation. You've got to have faith in something better when growing up black in New Orleans.
But this column isn't about race; nor is it about the city of my birth, whose actual tragedy has nothing to do with last summer's destruction by Hurricane Katrina. That's another story. I will write it later.
This is about the human spirit, its ability to triumph over seemingly insurmountable odds. It's why I believe General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co., despite the enormous difficulties that confronted them in 2005 and the many challenges facing them in the future, will regain strength and prosper.
In that regard, I am different from many of my peers, some of whom, intentionally or not, give the impression that they are eager to write the obituaries of the nation's largest automobile manufacturers. They look for every negative number, every perceived hostile market shift, every executive reshuffling to make their case for the imminent demise of Ford and GM.
And to that drama they've added the proverbial horse race, the business of whether Toyota Motor Corp. will overtake GM as the world's largest producer of cars and trucks. There is a frenzied anticipation of capitulation. You can feel it.
Of course, anything can happen, which is the point I want to make here. GM and Ford can come back. I believe they will. Here's why:
Both companies are still very much alive. They still have many talented people. Those people want to win. They are working to win.
That sounds like paltry stuff against the drumbeat of praise for supposed Japanese manufacturing superiority, and the incessant outpouring of criticism from the media and Wall Street about all things Detroit. But I liken that criticism to the stuff I've heard all of my 58 years of life about what certain people can't do, how certain people are naturally inferior to others, how certain people are destined to fail.
If I and all of those other certain people had listened to that rubbish, if we had injected it into our psyches and souls, we all would have ceased to exist long ago. We chose, instead, to embrace the possibilities of the human spirit. We rose above our critics; and we continue to rise, despite difficulties, and America and the world are better for it.
It may seem the un-businesslike, un-journalist-like thing to do, but I always look for that spirit -- that willingness to keep fighting when everyone is counting you out as a sure loser -- whenever I look at a corporation.
I saw it in Hyundai Motor Co. in 1986, when everyone considered that South Korean car company the laughingstock of the global automotive industry. Hyundai is now a formidable world competitor in the car and truck business.
I saw it in a young black Washingtonian, Kimatni Rawlins, when he had the audacity, the temerity to launch a business several years ago on the premise that the hip-hop culture would have a major styling and marketing influence on the car business. Other journalists, black and white, laughed at him. But Rawlins was right. Car companies all over the world now pay close attention to his "Automotive Rhythms" online magazine.
I saw it in Shanghai in the enthusiasm of young university students who found a way to make a car run on hydrogen peroxide. Laugh if you will. But those same students believe that their country's future in the automobile industry will be found in the exploitation of alternative fuels and propulsion technologies; and they are working night and day to bring that future about.
And I see that same spirit in the people of GM and Ford. They know that their companies have made serious mistakes. They know that they are paying now, and will continue to pay for those errors for some time to come. But not many of them are rolling over and playing dead. Instead, they are coming out with new and better products, such as Ford's mid-size Fusion sedan, which is competitive with anything in its category.
Both Ford and GM will continue to make pickup trucks and SUVs. They'd be stupid to do otherwise, considering that all of their major competitors are doing the same thing. The passenger truck market will be smaller in the wake of rapidly fluctuating fuel prices. But it isn't going away as long as there is a need to pull and carry people and things over long distances. There's still money to be made in that segment. And both GM and Ford are set to make it with better-designed, more-fuel-efficient pickups and SUVs, such as the completely revised Chevrolet Tahoe.
Last year saw a marked increased in passenger car sales in the United States, and a concomitant whine from the media about how "truck-heavy" Ford and GM have been placed at a competitive disadvantage -- as if Toyota and Nissan weren't "truck-heavy."
It's baloney.
The completely revised Chevrolet Aveo is a small-car winner. Ditto the Ford Focus. And in overseas markets where small cars make sense to people paying substantially more for motor fuel than we pay in the United States, both GM and Ford, directly and through their various foreign subsidiaries, have bountiful, competitive small-car offerings.
Thus, taken altogether, that means I'm betting on GM and Ford to ultimately start having many happy and prosperous new years. That's not a Wall Street wager. Wall Street gambles with other people's money; but it doesn't give a hoot about people, which is why I don't give a hoot about Wall Street.
I believe in people, their talent and their spirit. GM and Ford have the people to make a difference.
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