Ford appears on a few automotive magazine covers next month, and although sales are still slipping badly as they are for all carmakers, Ford’s new line of products is garnering favor among early reviewers. Its Ford 150 pickup won 2009 Truck of the Year. This spring, the Ford Fusion hybrid will hit the market. Ford is refitting a Mexican assembly plant to produce a small car for the American market, the Ford Fiesta, and next year will create a line of small cars with a small delivery truck and electric car.

Forbes gushes about Ford’s CEO, Alan Mulally:

Let us not forget the contributions of Alan Mulally, Ford president and chief executive. This ex-Boeing executive may not have known the car industry but seems to have given Ford the stability, purpose, focus and common sense that had been lacking for years.

The negative side to all this good news for Ford is that the company is blowing through cash, its sales in Europe had been strong but are getting weaker, and because it already mortgaged all its assets for the massive credit line that has put it on more solid financial footing than GM and Chrysler, it has no way of gaining more credit after tapping its final $10 billion credit line. Stock prices are down, and of course auto sales are skyrocketing to unprecedented low levels.

Despite all this, Ford is better off right now than its Detroit rivals.

Should a couple of other Detroit icons go down–not that anyone wants them to fall–then Ford would be the last American standing, which could be an advantage.

In order to begin negotiations with Ford on the matter, the UAW required the Detroit company to enter negotiations with its bondholders for concessions. GM and Chrysler are required to undergo similar bondholder concession talks by terms of the federal bailout. With no bondholder talks yet, Ford can’t announce a set date for an end to the jobs bank; UAW allowed Ford to announce an agreement had been reached to settle concerns about the company. The UAW wants the bondholders to split a “shared sacrifice.”

The UAW has also asked for its own representation on the Ford board of directors, in exchange for the union agreeing to allow retiree pensions to be bonded through company stock rather than outright cash.

According to The Detroit News, Ford actually has little chance of succeeding at renegotiating debt with its bondholders, because it has little to offer those bondholders in return.

GM and Chrysler are required by the federal bailout to renegotiate terms on two-thirds of their debt obligations, a process they’re undergoing right now; if they are unable to settle on terms with their lenders, the companies would be unable to qualify for further bailout funds and will sink into bankruptcy. Ford cannnot threaten bondholders with the prospect of bankruptcy, since it is on more solid financial footing than either GM or Chrysler.

Insiders point out that Ford needs only to win small concessions to take to UAW President Ron Gettelfinger to in turn show its union workers that they’re not the only ones conceding terms.

Shelly Lombard, a Gimme Credit analyst, responds that bondholders have little reason to concede terms to Ford at this time; they could wait and see if the bonds decline in value, at which point in time Ford might ask for its own bailout from Washington, which would probably mandate (as with GM and Chrysler now) that Ford restructure the debt. Although bondholders might object to taxpayers receiving equity in the company and having to follow federal mandates in order to receive the bailout cash, Lombard says: “If I was a bondholder, I’d wait it out. There’s almost an incentive not do anything now.”

A Ford insider concludes: “Everything is trickier for us because we’re not doing this under the auspices of the federal government. But we still wouldn’t rather be GM.”