Ford Sales Slide but High-Profit Trucks Soar

The familiar 2017 U.S. sales story line continues at Ford as it does with most of the U.S. auto industry: Overall June sales are down from last year because cars sales are falling off a cliff while consumers flock to more expensive CUVs and trucks.

There were 26 selling days in June, the same as last year, yielding 227,979 total vehicle deliveries for Ford, down 5.1%. The culprits were tanking car sales, off 23%, and fleet sales falling 13.9%.

While sales are down, the revenue side of the equation is much brighter, with continuing strong sales of high-profit SUVs, CUVs and fullsize pickups pumping up average transaction prices by $1,800. Ford’s Super Duty pickups led the charge with ATPs averaging in excess of $55,000.

“I like to tell the dealers the Ford Super Duty is the No.1 luxury brand in America,” says Mark LaNeve, vice president-U.S. Marketing, Sales and Service.

“We’ve seen some real interesting dynamics in terms of people choosing up-level trims and vehicles being chosen for a combination of work and pleasure. Customers are choosing all the latest safety features, and it’s just been a terrific business for us.”

Ford sold 77,895 F-Series trucks last month, up 9.8%. Explorer sales jumped 22.7%, with 21,304 sold, with more than 30% of retail sales in the top trim levels of Limited, Platinum or Sport. In addition to the bigger vehicles, Ford’s Edge CUV rose 20%. Escape saw a 6.4% drop, but LeNeve says that was due entirely to timing differences between rental-car orders compared with last year.

LaNeve downplays the impact of all Ford’s slower fleet deliveries and says they are due entirely to timing differences from last year. He says he expects overall fleet sales to even out with last year by the end of 2017.

On the car side, the biggest losers were the Mustang, down 36.7% in June, followed by the Fusion and Focus, which declined 31.6% and 20%, respectively.

The new Lincoln Continental hasn’t had a chance to make an impact with only 973 sales last month as production cranks up, but overall Lincoln saw a 5.3% increase for the month.

Through the first half, Ford is down 3.8% according to WardsAuto data, but key volume vehicles such as the F-Series and Explorer are up 9.6% and 5%, respectively.

LaNeve points to many positive economic factors that will support strong vehicles through the end of the year and beyond, including low unemployment, new investments in infrastructure and increases in new licensed drivers, but he also tempers the optimism as overall industry sales continue to underperform 2016. “Clearly we’ve got an industry that has peaked,” he says.

[email protected]