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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Ford Motor reported its first full-year profit since 2005 and said it expects to be profitable again in 2010.

The automaker, which has outpaced the turnaround at both its domestic and some overseas rivals, said Thursday that it earned $2.7 billion in 2009. The company was helped by special items that added $2.6 billion to its bottom line during the year.

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(Fortune Magazine) — Carroll Shelby’s life has always been tinged with an “against all odds” flavor. In the 1950s the young racecar driver shot to the top of his field, until a potentially deadly heart condition ended his career.

In the ’60s he channeled his competitive edge into a business that took European sheet metal (the AC Ace) and married it to powerful Ford V-8s — and the Shelby Cobra was born.

In 1964 he helped Lee Iacocca launch one of the most important American cars of all time: the Ford Mustang GT350. In ‘66 and ‘67, he oversaw Ford’s two Le Mans wins.

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Ford Motor Company unveiled a new small car at a press conference in Delhi, India on Wednesday. The subcompact, which is called the Figo, will be produced in India for the Indian market, as well as for export to other Asian countries and Africa.

The Figo’s launch “signals Ford’s intention to compete in India’s largest and most important small-car market segment,” the Dearborn, Mich.-based automaker said in an announcement.

A little over 1 million passenger cars are sold in India each year, according to Ford spokesman Mark Schirmer. The automaker expects India to become the third largest market for small cars, behind the U.S. and China, by 2030.

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Have you invested in Ford lately? A lot of investors have.

The stock of the only U.S. automaker not to file for bankruptcy this year has shot up like a rocket in the past few months, rising 376% from its February low.

Still, there are significant doubts about how much higher the shares could go. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters have a 12-month target price of $8, only 6% above Thursday’s closing price.

“There’s definitely risks to the Ford story. They’re not out of the woods yet,” said Efraim Levy, auto equity analyst for Standard & Poor’s. “Relative to General Motors and Chrysler, they’re benefiting from newer products and preference by some consumers to avoid companies that needed to be bailed out. But how much longer does the good news of market share gains continue?”

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WASHINGTON – Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, the nation’s top car salesman in recent weeks, has cited the Obama administration’s best-seller list of mostly smaller, fuel-saving cars like the Ford Focus to describe the success of the Cash for Clunkers rebate program.

But what LaHood and other administration officials usually don’t mention is that some trucks and sport-utility vehicles that get less than 20 miles per gallon, like the Ford F-150 truck and one version of the Cadillac SRX Crossover, also are being purchased with the new government subsidies. Both are bulky vehicles weighing more than 6,000 pounds when loaded that boast at least 248 horsepower.

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CHICAGO – Surging demand from the government’s “cash for clunkers” program has helped lift Ford Motor Co. to its first monthly increase in two years, the company’s top sales analyst said Sunday.

July sales results mark the first year-over-year gain for Ford since November 2007 and apparently the first uptick by any of the six biggest carmakers since last August, George Pipas said.

He declined to disclose a specific total before sales results are officially reported on Monday. Dearborn, Mich.-based Ford sold a total of 161,071 vehicles in July 2008, down 15 percent from a year earlier.

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NEW YORK – Struggling automotive parts supplier Lear Corp. filed for bankruptcy protection on Tuesday after receiving the support it needed from lenders and bondholders.

The move had been expected from Lear, which missed an interest payment on its bond debt last week and revealed its intention to seek court protection from its creditors. The Southfield, Michigan-based company made the filing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.

It listed $1.27 billion in assets and $4.54 billion in liabilities. Subsidiaries outside the U.S. and Canada are not part of the filings, the compan

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DEARBORN, Mich. – Cultivating the next generation of fuel-efficient vehicles, the Obama administration said Tuesday it would lend $5.9 billion to Ford Motor Co. and about $2.1 billion to Nissan Motor Co. and Tesla Motors Inc. in a government-industry partnership to build green cars.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the three automakers would be the first beneficiaries of a $25 billion fund to develop fuel-efficient vehicles. The loans to Ford will help the company upgrade factories in Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri and Ohio to produce 13 fuel-efficient vehicles.