Sales of Ford's core brands totaled 247,949 units in December, off 8.7 percent from 271,703 vehicles the year before. Car sales slipped 2.9 percent to 71,502, while truck volume slumped 10.9 percent to 176,447.

The company said monthly sales of Ford-brand vehicles -- excluding heavy trucks -- was 221,824, a 9.1 percent drop from last year. Ford's F-Series trucks, its top-selling line, suffered a 6.2 percent decrease in sales, among sharp declines in its popular Taurus and Focus car lines.

For the year, Ford's core brand sales were down 4.4 percent at 2.95 million units. An 8.3 percent drop in truck volume countered a 5.5 percent gain for car demand.

Will Ford attempt to "reignite" truck sales with even higher incentives or will they cut production of the number one selling vehicle, and their "crown Jewel," the F-150 for 06' and beyond?

 

So higher gas prices means more people bought cars and less trucks? Hmm, never would have guessed that!!

 

What am I missing? I'm reading Fords press release, and it claims the first gain in passenger car sales since 1999. The big gainers were the 500 (+45%), the Freestyle (+66%, oddly listed as a truck?). The Focus (-34%) and the Explorer (-29%) showed the biggest decreases.

Pickup (F-Series) sales were down 4% for the year- negligible.

What was interesting is that Silverado PU's were up 3.7% for the year, and Sierra was up 7.1%.... do the math.

 

Did you see the sales increase in the GT? + 804% and that is a pricey little item, and what about the Mustang? +24%, and dam, just think, 901,000 F series truck sales! Too bad they didn't break down the % of gas and diesel sales.

 

Yeah the Silverados and Sierras are up because you can get them pretty damn cheap. The prices people have been picking them up around here are ridiculous. I've heard GM is hurting because they are not making much money on their vehicles and judging by their prices I can see how that rumor came about. I wouldn't look into the decline in F-series sales too much because when your benchmark is 900K+ vehicles you are not going to have much room for error. I think the big story that is being overlooked is the marketing. I think GM's & Dodge's marketing stragedies are better than Ford's and it reaches a small percentage of people who are easily influenced by that sort of thing.

 

They'd have to break down F150/SD sales to do it, and they don't want to.

Another interesting bit of trivia- either the F-Series or the Silverado outsells the Camry and Accord combined.

 

For those who like to review auto sales numbers, here's a link to the preliminary US sales numbers by manufacturer for December - with year over year.

http://www.motorintelligence.com/%5Cdb%5CSR_Sales-2.xls

Ferrari had a Great Month!!!!!

[If the link doesn't work -- it should work if copied and pasted into the url line]