Ford sales drop more than 26 percent in August - Autos - MSNBC.com

Automaker says it doesn’t see opportunity for turnaround this year

DETROIT - Ford Motor Co. said Wednesday its U.S. sales fell 26.5 percent in August, as the struggling automaker’s results — even worse than July’s dismal figures — showed that the U.S. auto sales slump may not have bottomed out.
Ford sold 155,172 light vehicles last month, down 3.6 percent from 160,990 in July, which was the industry’s worst month for U.S. sales in 16 years.
The Dearborn-based automaker said its Ford, Lincoln and Mercury car sales dropped nearly 9 percent, while truck sales were off more than 32 percent last month.

The company also doesn’t expect a sales rebound in the second half of the year. It said Wednesday that it plans to cut 50,000 more vehicles from its production plan in the second half of the year, reducing its output to 890,000 in the last six months of 2008.
Ford’s numbers are an indication that the U.S. auto market was still in a funk in August.

They would have reduced August predictions even further had it not been for General Motors Corp.’s employee-pricing-for-everyone offer during the last two weeks of the month. On Wednesday, GM extended the offer until Sept. 30.
Employee discounts generally are 10 percent below the invoice price but vary by model.
GM and the rest of the auto industry were to release their August sales results later Wednesday.

 

Geez, that's a huge drop in sales. I would be surprised if GM or Mopar are any better. I understand even Toyota is experiencing a slide in sales.

I can't figure out why governments the world over, stand by and let big oil continue to gouge consumers and the economy.

Lousy car sales, lousy house sales, the recession.

I do think the tremendous and unwarranted cost of fuel, is at the bottom of a lot of this.

Oil prices have slid down, so why hasn't the price of gas corresponded ??

 

Credit is at the bottom of the situation not only in the USA but worldwide. They have allowed anyone to buy anything on credit for many years now & it is starting to catch up. I saw people driving NEW Trucks that didn't even have jobs. They drove them until the repo man came. Same with the housing deal. People got loans that they couldn't afford even when they got them not to mention when the adjustments in interest came along. People throwing credit cards around like they are rich. It had to come to a head sometime & now we ALL get to pay the price for it. I couldn't ever understand how guys I knew that only made $35,000/year had kids & were driving NEW CARS & TRUCKS some had both living in a brand new house, with a NEW boat etc. I use to say how do they afford that? Well, now I know.
GMAC just laid off several thousand employees. Everything is in the toilet soon it will flush & it will get even stinker.

 

The price of gas has gone down a little. Here, its gone down about 40 cents in the past month. Its nowhere near being back down to $2.50 a gallon, but at least its headed in the right direction.
As to why the governments of the world let the oil companies stick it to us, what do you expect them to do?
The OPEC nations control the world's supply of oil, so they can set the price at whatever they want. The other day they were talking on the news about the drop in the price of oil and they commented that it will likely go up again, because the last thing that OPEC wants is cheaper oil prices. If they want to make more money, they will simply cut back production and drive the price back up.
Yeah, Ford's sales were down 26% in August, but thats a result of consumers moving away from trucks and big SUVs and moving towards small cars. Ford cant keep up with the demand for the Focus right now and they dont have anything smaller than that right now, so buyers are looking elsewhere.
Ford wasnt the only one who was down. Toyota was down 9% and although GM and Chrysler havent released their number yet, you can bet they will be way down too.

 

that's a huge drop in sales.that sounds good.

 

WOW!! what a time to go and buy a new ford, they might pay you to take one ha ha.
Sales are allways slower in the summer any way, so it is truely a buyer market right now. Gas prices started this whole mess as of late, maybe with gas comming down a bit people won't be as scared to make some major purchases. This has been a shock to everyones budget when you have fuel, utilites and food all sky rocketing. People aren't so fast to buy right now. When the economy slows, people hang onto thier money which in turns slows the economy even more. The housing market should be starting to balance out now, thats another thing that got this latest ecconomy dip going. Living in a free interprise system, the economy will allways flucuate. My whole life the economy has been up and down, it's all in how you react to it. I try to keep living like normal, buying, selling and paying taxes. It is a bit scarey when fuel, food and everything goes up at once, it takes some adjusting. I might go buy a new ford myself to make me feel better about things. It's an election year, politians should be giving us new cars for our vote, at least a bumper sticker or something. I'm voting no higher taxes and for more drilling. So I won't have to say more, you know who I'm voting for and no it's not Boone Pickens ha ha. Well maybe if he ran.

 

About seven to eight years ago GM started to push Ford out of the commercial, rental business. Ford must of been asleep at the wheel to let GM introduce their cars to the general public like that. I think this has really hurt Ford at a bad time. PS I just rented a Chevy Malibu on vacation, if I was looking for a new car I wouldn't have even bothered to look at them, but after driving one, Hmmm.

 

O heck, you can test drive any car for free. People buy a car because something about it apeals to them, mostly in the looks department. Once you find a car you like the looks of, then you dig deeper into it's other positives. Or if your brand loyal like me, then you find a ford you like then dig deeper. All the car makers are feeling the crunch, the economy is too iffy for big ticket items. Unemployment is up again, fuel and food prices are soaring. Even my bag of kibbles and bit's went up 2 bucks, the dogs are looking for paper routes as we speak, or security dog jobs, anything to help out. Homeland security careers sound promising right now to well breed motivated pouches with decent benifits. They will pay for all of thier shots. I've seen a lot of economic dips in my 49 years, this by far is not the worst. With the right decessions, we could climb out of this pretty quick. If oil would come down and then stablize would be a huge help as it's driving inflation across the board.

 

Oddly, Nissan is up. Even Honda declined over last year.

Jim

 

"Oddly, Nissan is up."

They make some tough vehicles. We can hardly find them in salvage except for wrecks.