http://www.fordinsidenews.com/forums...GM-by-6K-units

i guess Ford is now getting the new vehicle buzz that GM has been riding. With gas prices going up, I expect the Fiesta to be doing really well this summer.

 

Congrats Ford!

 

The new Focus should gain Ford a lot of sales this year too. Same goes for the Explorer.

Doesn't Ford have a lot more dealerships than Chevy? 5 out of 8 of my closest Chevy dealers closed in 2009, while only 1 Ford dealer of 8 closed. So within a 45min. drive of Albany, NY there are 3 Chevy dealers and 7 Ford dealers.

 

 

I suspect Ford's turnaround will be a key case sample to study from Harvard Business Review in the coming years... hope they keep doing well.

 

Anyone have the fleet sales numbers? I heard on the radio that Ford pushed the big number with a big increase in fleet.

-Geoff

 

not exact numbers, but this was at the ford link in the "sales" thread

 

Ford has dedicated fleet vehicles, like the CV, which had a huge month since it is going away, the TC, and the Transit Connect. They also have the E-series van, which is primarily all fleet. Then the trucks sell very well to commercial fleets.

This explains much of the increase. One point, in regards to rental fleet sales (the bad fleet sales), is that it is still down 8% for the quarter. Ford sells very little to rental fleets these days.

The sad thing is, GM is missing out on alot of commercial truck sales. They have been losing these sales over the last few years, and need to update the trucks, to try to get some of these sales back. They are profitable sales, and great exposure.

Not all fleet sales are bad, and both GM and Ford have made a concerted effort to stop the rental fleet dumping that they used to do. They control inventory much closer now.

 

This is great news for Ford (and American car companies as a whole) because it wasn't too long ago Ford was in a distant third place in sales to Toyota.

 

Seems that every post of the competition doing well is followed by beliefs that said company's gains are because of nothing more than fleet sales.

Two things here.

1. Everyone has learned their lesson about heavily discounted fleet sales.

2. The big 3 started cutting back madly on fleet sales over a year ago, helped along by buyers of fleets (government and commercial agencies as well as rental companies) severly cutting back or completely eliminating purchases altogether.

3. Fleet sales in and of themselves are NOT bad.... it's how much they are discounted.

Ford still sells to fleets. However, the discounts are not as great as they once were. Same with GM and Chrysler.

It was the heavy discounts as well as the dependence on fleet and rental sales that automakers lost money on and created low resale values.

Since then, the workforce that makes cars and trucks has been decimated over the past few years, so there is no requirement to make vehicles simply because it makes more sense than paying workers for not making vehicles. Also, the vehicles made today are vehicles people WANT to buy, so there is no need to pawn off production to rental car agancies at huge discounts.

There will always be fleet sales. There will always be a demand for vehicles at rental agencies.

Outside of SUVs and pickups, if you look at rental agencies now, the majority of cars they have are foreign brands.

 

Yeah. The last three rentals I was in were a Kia and two Toyotas. The Kia was an SUV though.

 

Ford is running an American business and GM is being run by the American Government.

 

I(we) get it, no need to beat on a dead horse.

That said, the federal bailout was preferable to just letting GM disintegrate and taking the economy with it (not to mention Ford and Chrysler)

 

Actually it is not.

 

April numbers were posted a while back:

Ford: 189,778
GM: 232,538