Ford’s Sales Grow in US
Ford has released details that it has seen improvements in it’s market share of the US. The US car manufacturer announced that they sold 155,954 vehicles in May. Although this figure is down 24% from the same month last year, it’s actually a 20% increase on last months sales.
The increase in sales that Ford have seen could be down to the other car manufacturers such as Chrysler and General Motors who have both recently files for bankruptcy.
General Motors announced their figures the day after they filed for bankruptcy. They reported 191,875 vehicles sales last month which is a 30% drop on May 2008 sales, however, this is an 11% rise on last months sales. The worst performance in sales come from Hummer, Saab, Saturn and Pontiac, all of which GM are planning on selling on.
As for Chrysler, they filed for bankruptcy on April 30th and announced that they saw 79,010 sales from May which is a 47% decrease in US sales from the same month in 2008. They said that the majority of their sales have been down to a price cut from a huge number of dealers, this is because 789 dealers are planning to stop selling Chrysler cars next week.
Ford is currently in the process of changing their production strategy to try and take advantage of the bankruptcy situation. Ford have planned to put an extra 52,000 vehicles into production during the next 2 quarters.
The majority of car manufacturers have seen a drop in sales during the economic downturn, however, the drop in sales is not all down to a drop in public sales. Corporate sales have also been on the decrease, companies that offer Ford leasing aswell as a number of other makes such as Peugeot leasing are buying less cars because they are being hit by the credit crunch. The problem is that people rarely think about leasing a car which is generally the cheaper option, they normally think about buying a whole new car, and if they can’t afford it, they don’t bother.
