Principles

It's one thing to have principles and tell everyone you know about them.  It's quite another to actually live by certain principles.

I have said over and over, I will not ever buy another General Motors vehicle.  Ever.  The press has understated Ford's ability to weather the recession storm with out the help of the American taxpayers.  There is hardly any coverage about this point, but this does not go unnoticed to me.  It's a lesson in business.  Change your business model if it proves to be failing.  So a year before the big recession hit, Ford was making plans for a change.  They stopped making mini vans, and started to reinvest in smaller more fuel efficient cars.

In early 2010, Ford started to reap the rewards of it's change, although the mainstream media is still not reporting on the great things they are doing.  Ford's Fusion won Motor Trend's Car of the Year.  The last time Ford has won this award was in 2002 when the Thunderbird's re-emergence came to be.

Well in early 2010, in the year of change for me, I was able to help Ford continue it's growth.  I was able to buy a brand new car, the 2010 Ford Fusion.  It's filled with goodies.

I could go on and on about how awesome this car is, but I want to mention how awesome Ford is.  Not only is the dealer I worked with amazing, by helping me pay off the new car and getting me a decent rate on a new loan for the new car, despite my struggles to help build my credit, but Ford as a company has a great social media presence.  I tweeted on my way home that I bought a new Fusion.  They tweeted me the next day to congratulate me.

This is not the first time I have interacted with Ford on twitter.  I commented on how awesome it was that Mike Rowe from Discovery's Dirty Jobs is the spokesman for Ford.  They tweeted back, they thought so to and appreciated my comments.

With Toyota stumbling on their quality, Ford has always had a stigma of producing poor cars.  Everyone always has those stories, my Ford did this, my Ford did that, but with every bad story about a Ford there are 10 good stories that no one ever talks about.

Ford's quality has always been great, and now with the media darling that is Toyota currently in crisis mode over it's quality of production, Ford will still be unnoticed and underrated by the mainstream media.

You know what, I kind of like it that way.  They are just going to put their head's down, keep putting out a great product, and engaging their customers in new ways.  I will be there with them, behind the wheel of my new Fusion.

Next up in a few, getting my poor wife out of her GM and into a Ford Flex.