"The game plan is to keep going on our own and to try as hard as we can to not do that," company Executive Chairman Bill Ford said during a Ford event at the Detroit auto show, responding to reporters' questions about the line of credit.

"Right now as we see it we're comfortable, but we have asked for a line of credit just in case the world implodes as we know it," he said.

The other two U.S. automakers General Motors Corp and Chrysler LLC -- which is controlled by private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP -- have both received loans from the U.S. government to help them survive through the worst U.S. auto sales in decades as the world's largest economy languishes in recession.

Ford, the No. 2 U.S. automaker, has insisted that it has sufficient cash to keep going on its own and has not taken a government loan.

Ford has been seen by analysts as better placed to weather the latest economic storm because it borrowed more than $23 billion in 2006 to fund its turnaround, loans that were secured against most of the company's assets.

Ford, the great-grandson of company founder Henry Ford, told reporters that government incentives should be considered for U.S. consumers to buy hybrid vehicles as gas prices have fallen well below the highs reached in July 2008, and said that "right now, the entire economy needs help."

Bill Ford added that he expects gas prices will rise as the U.S. economy recovers.

(Reporting by Nick Carey and David Bailey, editing by Peter Bohan)