This is The Morning Shift, our one-stop daily roundup of all the auto news that's actually important — all in one place at 9:00 AM. Or, you could spend all day waiting for other sites to parse it out to you one story at a time. Isn't your time more important?

Ford's been on an amazing streak building great cars that manage to sell to the masses. It's been a single brand turnaround that deserves all the praise we've been giving it. Ford's "premium" Lincoln brand is entirely made up of rebadged Fords that are slightly nicer and unreasonably more expensive. It's been a…

Fresh from bedding a broke and busted GM, CNBC's Phil LeBeau now prepares to go deep inside lovingly, metaphorically caress deify Ford CEO and soon-to-be-patron-American-automotive-saint Alan Mulally. Watch him do it November 10th at 9 PM ET/PT on CNBC.

There appears to be a budding romance between Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne and Ford CEO Alan Mullaly. Ford's main man sneaked up behind his Italian counterpart at an awards ceremony this weekend. It was weird. And sweet. But mostly weird.

The Sequoia restaurant in Washington, DC announced today Ford is the recipient of its "Don't Give up the Ship!" award in a one-page ad purchased in the Washington Post. Why? They didn't suck as bad as GM and Chrysler.

Alan "Boeing! Boeing!" Mulally may not know how to pluralize Taurus, but it's clear he knows how to meet women; the kind of women who love panel vans. [@insideline_com]

At a Fortune magazine interview with Ford's Alan "Boeing! Boeing!" Mulally, the always-smilin' CEO used "Taurii" as the plural for Ford's Taurus car model. Unfortunately, according to Ford and the New York Times, he's wrong.