Ford Motor Company’s July sales in the U.S. declined 4% as the Number Two automaker failed to keep pace with a slowly recovering auto market. Ford sales executives attributed the weak performance to deliberately lower fleet deliveries, which were off -16%, but still made up 27% of Ford Motor’s 173,482 vehicle sales for the month. This could be viewed as progress of sorts since the fleet share declined from 31% a year earlier.
Where Ford is not making progress, though, is against Asian automakers, now fully recovered from last year’s natural disasters in the Pacific region, which disrupted production. Based on preliminary numbers it appears that offshore brands in total increased their market share by 3% up to 57% of the U.S. market in July, with Asian makes at a 46.9% share, up from 44% last month and 42.8% a year ago. Ford Motor’s share of the U.S. market declined to 15%, and it was just ahead of a resurgent Toyota Motor Sales with its deliveries of 165,000 vehicles and a share of 14%. The back end of the year will see a battle royal between Toyota and Ford, which appears to have no plan for Lincoln (7,000 at -11%) or how to recover lost sales from Mercury, now part of automotive oblivion.
Ford incentives, estimated by Edmunds at $2,742 per vehicle continue to hurt, and for that matter incentives wounded all of the Detroit Three in July, with GM at $3,311 and Chrysler Group at $2,731 while the industry average is $2,236.
As expected the Ford F-Series, the best-selling vehicle in the U.S., posted its 12th straight month of sales increases, with 49,314 of the large pickup trucks sold. The now cancelled Ranger compact pickup sold 400 units, which was a stark drop from last year’s 6,400 units, and that was from what was a badly out of date vehicle, which once dominated the small truck market. Ford executives continue to maintain that they are converting former Ranger buyers to the gigantic F-Series, but decline to provide actual numbers.
Chevrolet sold 4,000 of its newly introduced mid-size Colorado pickups in July – a 29% increase year-over-year; and GMC sold 720 Canyon clones of the Colorado. In addition, Toyota, adept at moving into segments once dominated by the Detroit Three, sold more than 4,000 4Runner pickups, an increase of 24%, and Nissan delivered almost 6,000 of its Frontier pickup, a 16% increase.
Ford also continued to experience trouble in the small car market with the subcompact Fiesta at 4,000 units, off 23% year over year as customers choose the larger compact Focus, 16,454. Once again Ford set a record for the outgoing and discounted Fusion mid-size sedan at 23,000, the best July in the aging car’s history. With a thoroughly revised Fusion and companion Lincoln MKS sedans just now entering production, a rapid ramp up of production devoid of Ford’s usual start up quality glitches is vital to the sales success of the company this fall, and will be key to its ability to stay in front of Toyota.
If you are keeping score, the Top Ten in July looks like this in round numbers: GM 201,000; Ford Motor 174,000; Toyota Motor Sales 166,000; Chrysler Group 126,000; American Honda 117,000; Nissan North America 98,000; Hyundai 62,000; Volkswagen Group 49,000; Kia 48,000; BMW Group 27,000.
