Despite the headwinds of a slumping U.S. economy, tight credit, high gasoline prices and declining home values, Ford Motor Co.’s top American executive said he is confident the company has enough cash to weather losses and make a profit again.

But Mark Fields, Ford’s president of the Americas, told reporters at a dinner Tuesday night that there will be a lag time before the company can start making profits on the small cars U.S. drivers are now craving.

And although sales of pickup trucks, Ford’s old profit center, are starting to improve as gas prices moderate, Fields said the company isn’t banking on that. Instead the company is planning to make money on new global models it will bring to the U.S. from Europe starting in 2010, he said.

“We continue to evaluate our liquidity and our alternatives to improve the balance sheet,” Fields said. “We’ll continue to look at that to make sure that we have adequate liquidity to successfully implement this very significant kind of transformation.”

When asked if Ford has the money to cover losses until it starts making money again, Fields said: “That is our intent, but also I don’t want to walk away from the fact that there’s lots of variables hitting this business every day,” he said. “Our role is to make sure that we’re as flexible as we can be to kind of take those things coming at us, both the good and the bad.”