Clever PR misdirection on their part.
They were also lucky in their timing - they had already mortgaged about $18 billion in assets in 2006. Neither one of those events on their own would have been enough to save the company. Both turned them into a major competitor again.
"bailout" is a fairly fuzzy term. If the banking system was working, there would have been no need for DOE loans. There was also the benefit of improved milage, thereby reducing carbon emissions. This seems like the sort of thing the DOE does anyway, and wouldn't raise eyebrows in a sane banking environment. I think by your meaning of "bailout" student loans are also a bailout.
On the other hand, GM and Chrysler went bankrupt. They sold secured assets to new GM and new Chrysler and, i believe, gave investors quite a haircut.
With the loans they made to Ford they used a different tactic -- they said to hell with the financial risk (which you usually bake into your interest rate) and made the loans anyway and left open the possibility of devastating financial losses. The only reason we're looking at this positively is because Ford was a success story. Had Ford folded, congressional heads would have rolled and we'd be cursing the TALF loans and praising the TARP bailouts.
Ford was in better shape than the others because they had mortgaged everything before the financial system locked up. That means they also started improving everything sooner.
From my perspective in Michigan the auto bailout was a huge success. My friends in the industry report that most of the cruft in the big three was cut or let go and they really shifted the culture. The whole industry is focused on technology. The suppliers survived. Hundreds of thousands of jobs exist because of the injection of liquidity.
But i think we agree (since you changed your terms) it's not exactly a "bailout", but the timing sure was super handy for ford.
Not that they were doing well anyway, but Hurricane Sandy sure did kill off that company.
When a supplier loses two customers while all its other customers order more parts than before, there might be some costs associated with adjusting to the new circumstances, but it won't go out of business.
We should have at least let GM burn in a fiery ball of death. Chrystler I'm a little less positive on as I generally approve of the Fiat deal and what the company has done since...some of it anyway.