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

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.