The company, whose fourth-quarter profit soundly beat Wall Street forecasts, attributed the full-year profit in part to cost-cutting, gains from debt reduction efforts, good results from its financing arm, and stronger pricing.

The automaker repeated its forecast that 2011 would be "solidly profitable," but Chief Financial Officer Lewis Booth cautioned that Ford still had to take steps to address its "uncompetitive balance sheet" and was watching for more signs that a fragile U.S. economic recovery would continue.