DEARBORN, Mich. -- With United States vehicle sales down nearly 13 percent this year, most car companies have been cutting production rather than increasing it.

But with 1,200 hourly workers cheering them on, top executives of the Ford Motor Company said Thursday at the ceremonial introduction of a new version of Ford's most important product, the F-150 pickup, that they would call back 1,000 laid-off workers to help build more trucks, according to The New York Times.

"You're going to pull us out of this by building the best truck that's ever been built," William Clay Ford Jr., Ford's executive chairman, said to the crowd at the River Rouge assembly complex.