Ford Motor U.S. sales in January totaled 136,710 vehicles, a 7% increase compared with January 2011. Overall auto industry sales were up 11.4% for the month. The overall market for new vehicles wasn’t as strong as the numbers or the media portrayed. Sales to fleets in rose nearly 33% from a year ago. January fleet sales were also up more than 28% from December 2011. This fleet SAAR translated to 3.2 million units, which was up significantly from both January 2011 and from last month. This is largely a Detroit Three problem as offshore makers have limited fleet sales.Ford retail sales increased 8%. The Ford brand sold 131,589 vehicles in January, making it the best January sales month since 2008 as the industry’s uncertain recovery slowly continues with lagging results this month at Ford and General Motors.
The Ford F-Series, America’s top-selling vehicle for the past 30 years, posted January sales of 38,493 vehicles, representing an 8% gain amid signs that the full size pickup truck market in the U.S. is declining. Here, preliminary numbers show that full size trucks now account for only 11% of the total industry.
Ford, GM and Chrysler all remain dependent to a large degree on profits earned from the sales of trucks. And Ford is inexplicably still sticking with its decision to not replace the Ranger compact truck even though GM has a new Colorado pickup coming and Dodge continues to do well with its Dakota in the mid-size segment.
The compact Escape SUV sold 17,259 of the SUVs, its best January ever with an increase of 24% year-over-year. A radically revised Escape is due later this year. Worrisome is a drop off in Fiesta sub-compact sales of -18% to 3,500 units of what remains an expensive small car. The larger Focus easily picked up the gap with sales of 14,400, a 60% increase y-o-y.
Lincoln sales declined yet again at-8% to 5,221 vehicles, a trend that is likely to continue until the new MKZ appears later this year.
