About The World

DEARBORN, Mich. (CBS News) ― If there's one city that's suffered mightily from the intense financial strain of the recession, it's Detroit.

And while General Motors and Chrysler have turned to the government for bailouts, one is doing so well that one Wall Street brokerage gave its stock a "buy" recommendation on Friday: Ford.

Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith sat down with Ford CEO Alan Mulally for an exclusive interview to discuss the company's apparent and relative success at weathering the economic storm battering his industry and the nation.

It was part one of a weeklong series, "Early Across America," looking stories of hope and optimism amid all the economic gloom sweeping the nation.

"If you're looking for that tiny glimmer of hope amid all the economic doom," says Smith, "the place to find it might be at the gleaming, green, state-of-the-art Ford truck plant in Dearborn, Mich. It has three shifts are working 24 four hours a day, seven days a week, turning out Ford F 150 pickup trucks.

"Every single truck has been spoken for," Smith continued. "A buyer or dealer wants it, which basically means it has a 'sold' sign on it"

"People care about this product," Ford worker Tommy Johnson told CBS News. "People care about their jobs. And we understand that the product we build is important to the rest of the country."

"There's no small amount of irony," Smith points out, "that part of the recovery of the U.S. auto industry will come from one of its most maligned products. But this isn't your pop's pick up: It gets more than 20 miles to the gallon, highway."

"Even in the most tough economic times," Mulally remarked to Smith, "we are there with a new product that people really want and they value."

Mulally became Ford CEO two-and-a-half years ago.

Among the first things he did was restructure the company's debt so, unlike the other U.S. automakers, Ford isn't looking for a government bailout.

"We didn't need taxpayer money; we had a really good plan," Mulally observes.

How long can Ford hang on in the current economic environment?

"Well, with what we see right now," Mulally responded, "we have a little bit of a cushion if the economy degrades even further. But ... we're assuming that all the actions that were taken, fiscal and monetary policy will result in starting to recover the second half of this year."

Mulally also sought to consolidate Ford's business. He sold off Jaguar and Volvo and Land Rover to concentrate on one thing: Ford.

"What we decided," he said to Smith, "was that we're going to be in every market, we're going to go back to our roots and focus on Ford. ... We're going to have small, medium and large vehicles, cars, utilities and trucks. We also decided we're going to be best-in-class in quality and fuel efficiency and safety, and also offer the best value."

Then he went to work with the unions to make Ford more competitive. He swears his current agreement with the United Auto Workers makes Ford competitive with Japanese automakers who build cars in America. "We have aligned the wages to the real value," Mulally says, "all the work rule changes that we have made, that we now are competitive with our foreign competitors inside the U.S. and we can make cars inside the U.S. profitably, which is a tremendous development for the U.S. and also for Ford."

Ford made money in the '90s selling pickups and SUVs but, to survive in the future, Mulally is convinced there needs to be more: "We made a commitment that every vehicle, no matter what its size, whether it's a car, a Fiesta, a Focus, a Fusion, a Mustang, an Escape or an Explorer, all the way up to a 150, no matter what the vehicle size, every year we're going to improve the fuel efficiency and the quality and the safety, and then the American public can decide exactly what vehicle works for them."

In the meantime, he committed to improving mileage and quality.

But his biggest challenge may be persuading a generation of Americans that American cars are just as good as those from the foreign competition -- truly a case, Mulally says, of, "Have you driven a Ford lately?"

As for President Obama and his efforts to revive the economy: not a discouraging word. He says he gives the administration "a very high grade for moving decisively" to revive the economy.

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