DEARBORN, Mich. -- Ford Motor Co. is going all in on a bet-the-company financing strategy that will put all of its U.S. assets -- including factories, office buildings and automotive technology -- up as collateral in a multibillion dollar credit deal designed to buy time to execute a North American restructuring.

The struggling automaker hopes to obtain $18 billion in financing to fund its turnaround and shore up its liquidity as protection against unanticipated events, such as a recession, the company said in a statement Monday.

The financing will include up to $15 billion in secured loans, which will be backed by most of Ford's domestic assets, as well as all or part of the stock it owns in subsidiaries such as Ford Motor Credit Co. and Volvo.

This is the first time Ford has put its assets up as collateral. While doing so gives the company access to much-needed funding, it also translates into a big increase in debt-servicing costs. More critically, however, the company's future is on the line if it fails to execute a turnaround.

"This is Ford's one last shot to get it right," said Wall Street analyst John Casesa of the Casesa Shapiro Group LLC. "If the restructuring plan is not executed flawlessly, the company will lose its independence. Management is staking the entire future of the company on successfully executing this plan."

That plan, dubbed Way Forward, calls for shuttering more than a dozen factories and cutting some 30,000 factory jobs and 14,000 salaried positions in an effort to resize the automaker to match greatly reduced demand for its cars and trucks.

Faced with increasingly stiff foreign competition, Ford has been hemorrhaging U.S. market share for years. Meanwhile, the company's financial woes have mounted as it grapples with rising costs for everything from health insurance to raw materials.

According to Casesa, Ford has not faced a challenge of this magnitude since the end of World War II, when it emerged a distant -- and struggling -- second to General Motors Corp. He said the problems of the 1970s and 1980s pale in comparison.

Ford is not the first Detroit automaker to pledge assets to borrow money. GM, which is also restructuring after posting a $10.6 billion loss last year, in July used North American assets including inventory, plants and property, to secure a $4.6 billion revolving loan. GM also pledged assets last month to secure a $1.5 billion loan.

But the scope of Ford's plan surprised analysts. The $18 billion amounts to about $11.7 billion in new funding because part of the new secured credit replaces $6.3 billion in existing unsecured credit. Ford will also be seeking approximately $3 billion in new unsecured notes, which could include notes convertible into its common stock. The company said the size of each portion of the deal will ultimately depend on market conditions.

The unsecured portion of the financing deal is being arranged by Citigroup Corporate and Investment Banking, Goldman Sachs Credit Partners L.P., and J.P. Morgan Securities Inc.

Ford expects the deals to close by Dec. 31 and hopes to end the year with $38 billion in liquidity.

"This is mammoth," said Bradley Rubin, an analyst with BNP Paribas in New York. "It was a lot bigger than Wall Street was expecting."

Ford's stock fell 4.23 percent Monday to close at $8.16 a share.

Two debt-rating agencies -- Standard & Poor's and Moody's -- cut their ratings on Ford's senior unsecured bonds deeper into junk-bond territory following Monday's announcement.

"The downgrade of the unsecured issues reflects the significant disadvantage to Ford's unsecured creditors by the planned introduction of $15 billion of secured debt into the capital structure," said Standard & Poor's credit analyst Robert Schulz, explaining that it could be hard for creditors to recoup their investment if Ford defaults on its debt.

Of course, bankruptcy is what Ford hopes to avoid. While filing for Chapter 11 is rarely a desirable option, the consequences would be particularly dramatic at Ford because the Ford family would lose the super-voting shares that give them control of the company.

"We see this new financing as an acknowledgement that its problems are more serious and may take longer to fix than it initially anticipated," said Shelly Lombard, senior high yield analyst at Gimme Credit. "We expected Ford to run through at least $5 billion of cash next year. At that kind of run rate, the company would have had only a few more years of liquidity, especially since it insists that it won't sell Ford Motor Credit."

Ford could still sell Jaguar or Land Rover, as neither of those brands appears to be pledged in this deal. The company is already looking for a buyer for its Aston Martin brand.

"Short of finding a well-capitalized partner, this is all the company can do," Casesa said.

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