Ford Motor Co., battling a 12-year slide in U.S. market share, negotiates a new contract this week with a United Auto Workers union seeking to extend job guarantees won at General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC.

Toyota’s recall of 470,000 vehicles in Japan announced recently comes as the car industry’s most admired manufacturer faces a string of setbacks.

The Dearborn automaker is widely regarded as Detroit’s most troubled automaker and the least capable of absorbing a strike.

A defective cruise control switch has caused concern from owners about the safety of their cars. As a result, Ford motor company is recalling 3.6 million passenger cars, trucks, sport utility vehicles and vans which contain this potentially dangerous cruise control switch.

As it proceeds with plans to slash jobs and shutter factories in North America, Ford Motor is expanding aggressively in Asia, announcing Tuesday a $500 million investment to build a car plant in Thailand just two weeks after opening a $510 million manufacturing center in Nanjing, China.

by Chris Tutor

Stumped for an appropriate gift for Dad? You can do what we did and send him a lifetime subscription to Autoblog (it’s very affordable), or actually put some thought and cash into something less useful. But what? Well, Ford has issued its Top Nine (nine?) list that, no big surprise, are sold right […]