FoMoCo Reports 13 Percent April Sales Reduction

Anthony Fontanelle
May 2, 2007

With the month of April finally over, car manufacturers are already reporting their sales output for the past month. It can be remembered that just a few days back, Edmunds.com posted their prediction for sales for April as per the major car brands.

For Ford, the online auto information source predicted a plunge of 21.7 percent for this year’s April as compared to last year’s. Luckily for Ford though, they managed to keep away from that disastrous prediction. Recently, the Ford Motor Company announced that they have sold 228,623 vehicles in the United States on the way to a posting sales decrease by 13 percent compared to the same month last year. Year to date sales is also down by 13.2 percent compared to the first four months of the past year.

While the company posted a reduced sale for the past month, they have reason to hope that they will be able to increase sales in the near future. One reason is the strong acceptance of their Ford Challenge ad campaign. According to Mark Fields, Ford’s President of the Americas: “With April behind us, we remain focused on getting the word out about the strength of our new products, and our marketing offensive is moving into high gear. Customers are responding very positively to our new ‘Ford Challenge’ ads that pit Ford vehicles against the best of the competition, so we're accelerating our plans.”

Earlier this year, Ford pitted the Fusion against class leaders Accord and the Camry by allowing consumers to test drive the three models and the Fusion came out as the winner in several areas. More recently, Ford is implementing the said ad campaign to its F-Series trucks. It is only a matter of time before anyone can see the real impact of these ad campaigns to the buying trend of the public.

Another reason for Ford’s brighter future is the growing demand for crossover utility vehicles. While car buyers are staying away from large vehicles such as SUVs and pickup trucks, Ford shifted their attention to producing smaller vehicles such as crossovers. The demand for these vehicles arrested the downward slide that Ford’s sales figures are taking as effective as EBC greenstuff brake pads in stopping a car.

The Ford Edge, one of the crossover utility vehicles in FoMoCo’s lineup posted April sales of 9,134 units while the Lincoln MKX posted 2,901 units sold for the same month. Aside from the two crossovers, Ford’s Land Rover also released its first crossover vehicle - the LR2. In the LR2’s first month in the market, it already posted respectable sales figure of 1,302 units. The impact of crossover vehicles in FoMoCo’s sales this month is very evident in the fact that the only brands with increased sales for the past month are Lincoln and Land Rover. For the past month, Lincoln sold 11,832 units, which equates to an increase of 6.9 percent as compared to their April 2006 sales of 11,067 units. Land Rover, on the other hand, posted a 12.7 percent increase on its April 2007 sales by selling 4,211 vehicles last month as compared to the 3,736 vehicles that the brand managed to sell for the same month last year.

All in all, Ford sold 228,623 vehicles for the past month, and that is a 13 percent sales reduction compared to the 262,722 vehicles that the Dearborn-based car manufacturer sold last year for the same month. Year to date sale reached 871,583 vehicles sold for the first four months of the year. The figure is 13.2 percent lower than their year to date sales after the first four months of 2006 when the company already broke the one million mark at 1,003,560 vehicles sold.

Given that, Ford is focused on increasing sales output by producing more crossover vehicles in the market. “Three years ago, 70 percent of new Ford Motor Company vehicles sold in the U.S. were trucks and traditional SUVs. Today, the balance is nearly 50 percent cars and crossovers, and 50 percent trucks and SUVs,” says Mark Fields. “We will continue to introduce new crossovers and even more small cars in the U.S., as they represent the consumer growth segments going forward,” he added further.

Source:  Amazines.com