Ford Motor Co. is set to sue Ferrari on the grounds of "stealing" the name "F-150".

Ford’s F150 pick-up has been a huge success on American shores for more than 20 years and the manufacturer is now angered that Ferrari has elected to use the same name for the car it hopes will secure the F1 crown this season.
Ford insists it asked Ferrari to change the name of the car but having had no reply, has been left with no option but to take action.
“F-150 is an established and important Ford trademark and the name of the best-seller in ord’s F-Series, America’s best-selling trucks for 34 years and best-selling vehicles for 29 years,” a statement from Ford read. “Through extensive sales and advertising and exclusive use, Ford has earned invaluable goodwill in the F-150 trademark. That hard-won goodwill is seriously threatened by Ferrari’s adoption of ‘F150’.

Source, http://totalf1.com/full_story/view/365144/Ford_to_sue_Ferrari/

Now, considering that in the 1960's one of GM's top selling sports cars was the Pontiac GTO...

1960s Ferrari GTO


1960s Pontiac GTO


1980s Ferrari GTO


2011 Ferrari F-150


2011 Ford F-150


Now, how on earth could Ford event think of being offended ???  

Cause people may buy a Ferrari racing car thinking it's a Ford pickup truck, you know, by mistake.

You have to remember that there was no confusion between Pontiac and Ferrari over GTO.

In America, Pontiac's use of GTO was simply shorthand for "Garbage Truck Options".

If one knows what GTO really means, it was a combination of sacrilage and fraud for Pontiac to attach the letters GTO that that boulevard bathtub of a vehicle.

Mpescatori, Ford has spent all their goverment bailout money. Wall St is destroying the working middle class so hardly anyone can afford to buy one of their F150's. So Ford is sueing Ferrarrri? How else is an honest man supposed to make a living?

I understood Ford didn't take any bailout money.

Thanks for the info.

So they're obnoxious and FOur fingeReD... what's not to like?  

I don't care if they take that money and develop a Mr. Fusion car that runs on banana peels.  No more big-3 vehicles for me.

Midnight -

What you may not know is when any private industry concern takes gov't grants for research into anything, as part of the deal  the private company gives up the patent rights it would otherwise have on whatever it is that they develop.

So, the end result is out there in the public domain to be used by others.

So, if you want the research done in America as opposed to overseas, and then have the results, if successful, available to all, what's wrong with that?

And, having gov't give grants to private industry spends the money where it counts - in America and American workers' hands.

You seem to be bent on finding fault with whatever a company does.  How would you prefer this research be done?

I un derstand, but it's the Board who pays any exec. officer.  A CEO doesn't "pay himself".  Since this man ran Ford, and still does, I think, in a manner that the company was able to bank enough cash during the good times of the mid 2000s to keep the company running during the downturn, and NOT take a cent of bailout money, I think he was worth it.

Did you read yesterday that the TARP program has so far returned a profit to the U.S. taxpayers of 20+ Billion Dollars from all of the bank loans that have now been repaid, mostly ahead of time, with interest and stock warrants that the gov't has now sold to earn that profit?

So when we use the term "bailout" in the future, it has been the gov't deficit budget that has been the primary beneficiary of being bailed out by American banks.