tbeck pictured here with his brand new 2010 Ford Fusion, with the Motor Trend Car of the Year

Each year Motor Trend evaluates the best automobiles from all over the world. The award for Car of the Year use to be an honor bestowed on only United States domestic automobiles, with a special category for imports, the Import Car of the Year. In 2000, Motor Trend began to evaluate all cars within a single category of Car of the Year. Since then the award has gone 5 times to imports, and 5 times to domestic automobiles. This year, the tie was broken.

This award means more this year than any other year. The automobile industry is attempting to recover from the worst sales slump in their long history as the nation struggles through a major recession. Of all the automobile manufactures across the world, the big 3 have suffered the worst. The difficult and often painful changes, layoffs and scaling back, they implement years ago were exactly what had to be done.

The announcement that the Ford Fusion had won the Motor Trend Car of the Year for 2010 was the crowning achievement of years of very hard work by the Ford Engineers. And all of this was done during a time when it was questionable as to the future health of the domestic automobile industry. It is a testimony to the leadership and devotion of the Ford motor company and its employees. I hope you will join me in congratulating them on this award.

The story gets a little sweeter for my brother, who is a Ford Engineer. The actual Motor Trend award, yes the actual award, makes its way around the winning company. Think of it as the Stanley Cup of automobile awards. It is shared with the people that earned the award. Yesterday the award made it to Dearborn, Michigan and my brothers team. He seized the opportunity to showcase the award on his brand new 2010 Ford Fusion. Amazing!

Congratulations to tbeck and the entire Ford family!