Ford Sales Dip Below Significant Mark
By Michelle Krebs March 5, 2009By Bill Visnic
When February sales were tallied this week, Ford Motor Co. reported aggregate sales for its Ford, Lincoln and Mercury brands of 96,044. It was the first time in Edmunds.com
sales data reaching back to 1991 that Ford monthly sales dipped below the 100,000-unit mark.
Even adding the 3,356 units sold last month by Ford-owned Volvo Cars couldn't buoy Ford above the 100,000-unit threshold.
Ford, Lincoln and Mercury total sales were down 48.2 percent last month and so far are off 44.1 percent for the year.
Like almost all other automakers, Ford was pulled down by a monthly sales pace that hasn't been seen since the late 1960s. Ford chief sales analyst George Pipas said in a conference call with reporters that the industry's retail-sales Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate was somewhere in the mid 7-million range.
Also contributing to the historic damper on sales: the Detroit Three automakers are continuing to implement drastic cutbacks in fleet sales, a move driven largely by their collective downsizing of manufacturing capacity.
Pipas also noted that a continued dissipation of light-truck sales - disproportionately worse, even, than the overall market decline - and Ford's deliberate strategy of reducing incentive levels were big factors in depressing the company's sales volume.
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