September’s Numbers Are In
by Jason Giacchino

In a way, it could be said that truck sales are an accurate measurement of the overall economy’s health.  How so, you ask? Well when things started to get ugly with the housing market fallout back in 2008, truck and SUV sales started tanking.  Naturally as gas prices got nastier and nastier, sales of trucks and SUVs plummeted again.

In September, Ford Motor Company showed the lowest positive growth of any major automaker group doing business in the US market. But here's the good news: with an improvement of 9% over September 2010, Ford beat out American Honda and Toyota Motor Co. in September sales growth, thanks mostly to the popularity of their pickup trucks and SUVs.

The Ford brand had a strong month, posting an increase of 14% with help from the F- Series, the Explorer, the Escape and the Fusion.  Ford was the strongest brand of the corporate umbrella in terms of growth with a 14% improvement. But more importantly, Ford was the best-selling single brand in the entire US auto industry with 168,181 units sold last month.

The new Explorer led Ford’s growth with 11,336 units moved for an improvement of 24% over September 2010. The Ford Ranger has seen production come to an end, but it is still selling strong, with an 88% year-over-year improvement making the compact pickup the second best model in terms of growth.

As can be expected, the best-selling model from the entire Ford brand was the F-Series pickup family, with an impressive 54,410 trucks reaching consumers last month alone– an improvement of 15% from one year ago (September 2010). With 20,225 units sold, the Ford Escape was second in total sales and the Ford Fusion sedan was third in sales with 19,510 models sold.