President Obama wants to preserve an American automobile industry. Well, here’s good news for him. There will be an American-owned to industry in the future. Absolutely. It will be named The Ford Motor Company. Most of the car plants here will be foreign-owned, but Ford will keep our flag flying.

Now everything is still in a state of flux. General Motors may go bankrupt. Chrysler may be bought by foreigners. Car sales are still terrible and the President’s Office of People-Who-Are-Smarter-Than-You (thank you David Brooks of The New York Times for discovering that office) still mistakenly thinks the American people will line up to buy tiny but terribly expensive electric cars that won’t run far and take hours to recharge.

Thus what I’m predicting could change. But we are beginning to get an idea of what will happen to this major industry.

Auto industries are different. Yes, they create jobs, but more than that, they seem to create a sense of national pride. Great Britain allowed its home industry to die and the nation survived. Windsor Castle still stands. Britain’s car plants today are owned by Japanese, Americans, and Indians (Tata of India makes its Jaguars and Land Rovers there). But most nations protect their autos. Even Russia is spending to save the producer of its Ladas. Japan and German will act, too. It’s not just the factory jobs. The industry provides work for designers and engineers, creates factory technology, and puts our science to work in practical ways, such as sensors that determine that a crash is coming and tighten our seat belts.

So what will happen to the industry in the U.S? Today we aren’t sure that this year’s sales will reach 10 million. Sales will grow again, but it will take years before they reach the 17 million peak of a decade ago, or climb above it. Our domestically owned industry will control but 25 to 30 percent of the business in a few years. That’s all, but it will exist. General Motors, whether it avoids bankruptcy or not, probably will control only 10 percent of the market. Cadillac and Chevrolet will be all that remains of the once-mighty lineup. The company will be a vassal of the government and live off government business. It’s reasonable to figure that the loans being made today—the total will be $30 billion soon enough—will never be repaid. 

It is always possible that some new Moses will arise to lead GM out of the wilderness. After all, GM was not created by bureaucrats but by heroes: Alfred Durant, the speculator who dreamed it up; Alfred Sloan, who made GM into a corporate machine that worked; Charles Kettering, the inventor who made cars practical, and dynamos such as Charlie Nash and Walter Chrysler (yes, Nash and Chrysler worked for General Motors before they broke away and founded their own companies) who built the cars.

But these aren’t the types we would expect that President’s Office of People-Who-Are-Smarter-Than-You to pick to lead the company.  So we should expect many years of struggle under the government thumb.

Chrysler has been told by the government that it can’t exist alone and to merge into Italian Fiat or go bankrupt. This is strange thinking: Chrysler probably is easier to salvage than GM. The idea behind selling the company to Fiat is so it will be saved by building small, Fiat-type cars. It would take two-three years to engineer the cars and tool the plants here. But if Chrysler could survive two-three years without those Fiat cars, then why does it need Fiat? Chrysler could create its own new cars in two-three years.

But Chrysler has its orders from the President’s Office, and it goes foreign or goes down.

This leaves Ford, which will survive for the American auto industry. Ford hasn’t taken any government money. It has a growing reputation for quality cars and a growing product portfolio that includes new small cars and hybrid cars. And it still builds the nation’s best-selling vehicle, the Ford pickup. The company is led by an engineer, not a finance man, which might explain why it’s better at actually getting things done. Ford might need government loans if the industry’s business stays in a state of collapse, but the company will fight to protect its stockholders—unlike GM—because so many of its stockholders are named “Ford.”

As proof of confidence, my wife bought 1,000 shares of Ford (at $1.90 each) and is up $1 a share as I write this.

I believe Ford can hold 15 percent of the market and perhaps grow—and the government-sponsored GM may hold 10 percent. The foreign manufacturers from Japan, Korea, Germany, and possibly, Italy will hold the remainder, but most of the cars they sell here will be built here. The better jobs, the value-added jobs in engineering, design, tool building, and decision-making, will be in their home countries. That’s the price of losing. But Ford will continue to exist a free American company.

Perhaps some day a new American car will arise. A company called Tesla is trying to build electric cars on the West Coast, but will need huge grants from the government to survive. After all, more than 2,000 auto companies were created in this country over the last century. That will be for another decade and new wave of creators.

For now, we still have Ford.

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