jobu37

Fleet central has posted the fleet sales for the first half of the 2008 model year. Ford continues to perform relatively well in regards to reducing rental fleet sales. The information below is comparing a full year's worth of data to only half a year's of data for 2008. So this is not an apples to apples comparison in that regard. Ford Vehicles (2008 and 2007) Rental Fleet percentages Econoline 25.81% and 24.80% Focus 20.58 % and 19.38% Fusion 17.56% and 13.43% Edge 18.08% and 15.79% Explorer 23.29% and 15.72% F-series 3.85% and 3.02% Escape 12.93% and 14.99% Mustang 16.82% and 22.03% Expedition 15.79% and 15.82% Taurus 16.87% and 62.93% Taurus X 21.71% and 42.76% Cr. Vic 7.10% and 7.08% Ranger .50% and .65% Sport Trac .17% and .12% Mustang, Taurus twins, and Escape helped offset increases in the other models. The Ford brand was at 12.96% rental fleet in the first half of 2008 compared to 12.45% for all of 2007. Ford held 11.95% of rental fleet marketshare in 2008 compared to 12.60% rental fleet marketshare for 2007. So even though they increased the percentage of rental fleet sales they did not keep up with everybody else. You might be surprised to see who increased rental fleet marketshare the most in 2008 so far. See below. Lincoln and Mercury 2008 and 2007 rental fleet percentages Navigator 9.10% and 6.31% MKX 3.57% and 2.85% Town Car 39.43% and 47.91% MKZ 2.43% and 3.38% Grand Marq 53.20% and 47.07% Milan 14.05% and 14.67% Mountaineer 25.23% and 18.07% Mariner 13.49% and 9.50% Sable 10.43% and 48.39% Percentage of sales to rental fleets 1) Kia 33.36% (Increased their rental fleet marketshare by 1.13 points over 2007) 2) Chrysler 27.45% (Increased their rental fleet marketshare by 1.12 points over 2007) 3) Mazda 24.15% (Mazda6 over 58% rental fleet.) 4) Hyuandai 23.48% (Increased rental fleet marketshare by 1.05 points) 5) GM 15.60% (REDUCED THEIR RENTAL FLEET MARKETSHARE BY 7.66 POINTS) 6) Ford 13.58% (reduced rental fleet marketshare by 1.40 points) 7) Nissan 13.07% (Catching Ford fast. Increased fleet marketshare by 1.68 points) 8) Toyota 7.40% (The winner is Toyota. They increased rental fleet marketshare by 2.06 points) 9) Honda .75% (Honda continues to act like they dont' want to play in the fleet dumping game) Toyota models contributing to their ever increasing dependence on fleet sales appear to the be the following: Avalon 22.69% rental fleet Sienna 19.95% rental fleet RAV4 16.77% rental fleet Highlander 18.35% rental fleet Part of GM's success may have had more to do with the American Axle strike rather than a disciplined approach to reducing rental fleet sales. Time will tell. Nissan appears to pulling out all the stops to increase sales. They are almost matching Ford on the percentage of sales front for rental fleets and they have been giving away all trucks and SUVs at the retail level the past two months. I wonder if management's bonus criteria for this year is closely tied to marketshare gains.

JD Powers and other quality rating agencies would beg to differ with you on this assertion. As would Mercury owners since they provide the data that backs up the quality rankings.

What GM cars have been NA successes under their global strategy? Obviously not the Aveo or Astra. Perhaps the Cruze will be the first but it is still a couple of years away just like the Fiesta. I don't understand what Mr. Hall is basing his positive view of GM's approach on. I may be missing something so please correct me if I am wrong. Maybe it was the GTO or G8 he is basing his view on. Those have both been out of the park homeruns (sarcasm) but all the examples I have given are vehicles imported from other countries. As far as I know GM is not building anything here based on anything from Europe or anywhere else. So in my mind it is extremely premature for this analyst to draw the conclusions on either Ford or GM's approach to global platforms.

Good point, Tornado. Comparing Ford's approach to engine options to GM's is not a fair comparison. Ford is moving towards a reduction in options that reduces the cost to assemble by reducing inventory and more uniform assembly procedures which can reduce qaulity issues. GM is still in denial. They are behind everybody is using commonsense to make decisions about production. They are still living with the attitude that they have been the #1 auto manufacturer for 80 years so they must be doing something right. This point of view was demonstrated as recently as last month when GM reverted back to buying marketshare at the sake of profits. If Ford is wrong for not offering more engine options are they also wrong for not having an additional 4 redundant divisions? The little extra expenses here and there caused by trying to differrentiate between models is probably one of the reasons that GM has had negative operational cashflow for well over a year while Ford had been very cashflow positve on the operational front up until last quarter. When criticizing Ford for not mimicing another automaker, perhaps one should choose anyone but GM in the comparison. And yes I agree, Ford's biggest weakness is perception in marketplace. I'm hoping Farley can do something but I'm still waiting. The right things are being done on factory floor. Now Farley needs to find a way to breakthrough some of the stupidity that exists amongst the blind loyalists.

Keep in mind the point was that Ford was going to overtake GM. In what way was GM doing the opposite of your points above? Both companies were following the same path and Ford was catching up. So had Ford not had to deal with the tire fiasco the morale of the company would not have dropped like a lead balloon and the buying public would not have been given a reason to stop shopping Ford dealers. There would have been alot of extra cash laying around had the Explorer sales rate not dropped off a cliff due to this. So one could assume with the extra cash Ford would have been a little more open to taking risks by following at least some of Wolfgang's proposals. Since Wolfgang's departure where has he gone and what has he done to demonstrate the keen insight into the automobile market that you imply he possesses? I'm only being half sarcastic, I really don't remember where he went and I certainly don't hear his name anymore in the automotive press.

I'm not so sure you were correct as much as you were lucky on your timing to take a negative attitude towards your employer. These predictions of passing GM came out just before Firestone killed Ford's momentum. Something that Ford has yet to recover from.

They are also ratcheting up incentives in the retail arena. There was a recent article on Edmunds.com that stated "Nissan bought marketshare in July". Evidence suggests that the same thing took place in August. Of course, one didn't really need to read the article to summize that they were giving the farm away when each of their truck models were up in July year over year. This coming on the heals of 10 months in a row of negative year over year comparisons. Without any new models being release it smelled of incentivized sales. However, they must have found a unique and effective approach since everybody has been pushing up the incentives on trucks the last couple of months. Edmunds is also stating that Nissan is getting very close to the big 3 in amount of incentives per sale. They are only $1,000 less than Ford, $1,500 less than GM and $8,500 less than Chrysler. JK on the Chrysler. They are really about $2,200 less than Chrysler.

I have Ford L-M down 12% Ford -13.08% Mercury -13.71% Lincoln +17.53% Notables Fusion 14,250 +13.90% Focus 18,500 +39.29% Escape 15,000 +25.42% Edge 8,250 -18.84% Flex 5,500 F-ser 46,125 -33.36% MKS 4,750 Just wishful thinking probably. However the MKS appears to be moving very well. Local dealership received 3rd and 4th units Friday. Sold second unit yesterday. Also sold about 4th Flex yesterday as well. Expeditions and F-series been flying off the lots here locally as well. Outside chance the F-series may hit 50K this month. Focus started the month off hot but cooled as gas prices dropped to $3.40 per gallon.

This was the other part of this review that I thought was off base. The reviewer's claim that the Lincoln cost more than any of the competition. But it has been my understanding that one of the pillars of Ford's advertising for the MKS was going to be "more bang for your buck" with all the standard equipment that cost extra on the competing models. I have always been suspect of the validity of Edmunds because of reviews like this and the fact that their apparent resident genius Jesse Toprak Shakur looks like someone that received repeated blows to the head as a youth. And most of his comments that are quoted by the AP in almost every auto related column sound like something from a dimwitted individual with next to no knowledge of the industry. I was always annoyed at seeing his name in every damn article written by the non automotive press, but when I saw a picture of how stupid he looks it just led to more annoyance. Perhaps I'm being too judgmental.

Hence the reason I said "anything over the CD class" which would imply that I was referring to the D class. But now as I write this I guess I should have just said D class. BTW I did not mean to offend you by stereotyping buyers of the 300. It's just that I only see gangbanger wantabes and geriatrics driving them.

The only reason the 300 sells now is due to fleets willing to buy them. The 300 was at 31% rental fleet last year and 40% total fleet. While the Charger was at 32% rental fleet and 49% total fleet. The morons who bought the 300 for it's bling bling attributes already have one or they are now in prison hence the reason demand has tapered off. The mainstream market appears to be turning their nose up at the styling you mention. Any vehicle over the size of CD appears to be out of favor with the majority of car buyers regardless of whether or not it is FWD or RWD.

Forgive me for not knowing but aren't the CTS and MKZ competitors? Wouldn't the MKS be more of a competitor with the DTS or STS on the Caddy side? Shouldn't a reviewer know which models are in the same class? I don't recall the MKS being billed as a sports sedan but yet this reviewer seems intent on comparing apples to oranges with his Cadillac comparison at least. Most of the other reviews of the MKS didn't find as many flaws as this guy. Maybe he is the world's best automotive reviewer but I suspect that he is really just a moron.

It is my understanding from PR releases for the MKS that Tuxedo Black has glass chips mixed in with the paint for one reason or another. I imagine it is suppose to make the MKS sparkle as you drive down the street. Perhaps that is what caused you to get the impression that metal shavings were present. What you viewed as a flaw may have been intentional.

I have analyzed the data to determine how bad Ford is doing against the competitiion in the "rental fleet" business. Rental Fleet marketshare GM 32.80% Chrysler 24.75% Ford 15.68% So 73.23% of all rental fleet sales are made by the Big 3. These numbers do not include foreign owned or controlled brands (Volvo, Mazda, Saab, Jaguar etc.) Total number of vehicles dumped into rental fleets GM 646,177 Chrysler 487,511 Ford 308,938 Before I ran all the numbers I did not expect there to be this large of a gap. Especially after the performance of the Taurus and Expedition. The biggest surprise to me in calculating these numbers is the incredible number of Tahoes and Yukons that GM sold at retail. They outsell the Expedition by more than 3 to 1. Which makes one wonder how bad off is GM really doing if they couldn't be profitable selling that many large SUVs last year. Rental fleet percentage of total sales Chrysler 23.54% Kia 23.37% GM 17.11% Hyundai 16.08% Mazda 13.89% Ford 13.52% Nissan 10.17% Toyota 5.18% Honda 1.43% So in regards to the worst kind of fleet sales Ford is not doing as badly as some on here suggest. Let's just hope Ford can stay the course and improve upon these numbers next year. It is a safe bet that the Focus numbers will have improved dramatically in the next Fleet Central report and one can assume that the Fusion will be reducing rental fleets starting in January. Retail % of sales Honda 97.60% Toyota 92.55% Nissan 88.73% Mazda 84.82% Hyundai 83.01% Kia 75.63% GM 72.69% Ford 70.11% Chrysler 69.38% This is where government and commercial fleet sales bring Ford down to the bottom of the pack. Due to vehicles such as the Crown Vic, Escape, and Taurus (arguably the pefect vehicle for a sales professional) Ford has a very high marketshare in those segments which skews the retail percentage downward. However on the flip side of the coin if there were more retail demand Ford would maybe turn down more governmental and commercial business. Which is what the new tiplets should help facilitate just as the Focus is doing now. Retail Marketshare GM 21.62% Toyota 18.37% Ford 12.62% Honda 11.75% Chryco 11.32% Nissan 6.90% Hyundai 2.93% Mazda 1.88% Kia 1.81% Of course these numbers are dated since there has been a big shift since March of this year. Honda may have passed Ford by now and the same could be said for Nissan passing Chrysler. I suspect that the big 3 should take back some share in August due to the drop in fuel prices and the incredible deals on SUVs and Trucks.

Are you really that stupid? Do you really think in the current environment in which the Focus has shown 100% increases in retail sales followed by 80% increases the following month that Ford has continued to dump 13% of the Focus production into rental fleets? Especially when every dealer in the country is screaming for more product. In 2007 the Focus was still at 13% rental fleet. They ranked as the third, by volume, biggest contributor to rental fleets in the sub-compact category. Top three listed below. Cobalt 48,484 Corolla 38,347 Focus 32,405 What's different this year is that Focus retail volume is up over 50% year to date. Corolla had a huge May after having very weak first four months which leads one to suspect that they dumped into fleets to try to convince people that their all new unchanged Corolla was truly in demand. Corolla sales have come back down to earth in subsequent months. When everybody elses subcompacts took off the Cobalt did not but the following month they shot to the moon. Did people all of sudden realize in one month that the long in the tooth Cobalt existed? Or did GM attempt to placate their ego and make sure that they did better than Ford in the subcompact category by resorting to dumping as obviously they were doing in all of 2007? It is not too long of a limb for to go out onto in predicting that the Focus is well below 10% rental fleet year to date. The Fusion was the fifteenth biggest contributor to rental fleets in 2007 by volume in the compact and up car segments. Behind such great names as Camry, Altima, 300, and Charger. GM alone sold 281,815 units in this segment to rental fleets in 2007. That's an entire plant worth of production on three shifts. The only area where Ford did poorly is in the Taurus. And even those numbers are skewed considering the fact that in 2007 Ford sold a total of 33,032 Taurus when one looks at monthly sales data. However, fleetcentral is quoting 38,112 as the total for 2007. This tells me that they found some way to include 5,080 "old" Taurus fleet sales in the numbers. Even though Ford had zero sales of the old Taurus in 2007. Even if you back out the 5,080 it is a poor showing but the D segment is dead for everybody. One can only hope the next gen Taurus provides something that can convince the buying public to get back into the D segment. High fuel prices, incredible fuel mileage for it's size, and practicality have not been enough thus far to stimulate Taurus sales. As usual the biggest thing to take away from these numbers is the fact that everyone has failed, again, to be Honda. That being said, Honda actually increased their fleets sales in 2007 but since they were so far ahead of everybody the increase was not material in nature. All in all I was disappointed that Ford was not able to reduce rental fleet sales more than they did but after further analysis I hope the numbers will show they improved more than the industry average. I will provide those numbers in the near future. So much data and so little time but I will work it up.

Where will the MCE for the Edge and MKX fall in comparison to this vehicle? 6 months later? Two weeks? A year? My point is that this will be competing against an updated MKX. I'm sure others track the timing of vehicle launches much more closely than I. So when does the refresh come for the MKX? This Caddy is coming out, what, a year from now or more? My point is that the initial post was comparing a two year old MKX to a future Caddy that is a year away. Not an apples to apples comparison.

They usually take the number of sales in the prior month and divide it by the number of days in the month or the number of sales days in the month. Assuming that they used the number of days in the month of July compared to the 2,204 units sold in July that tells me that Ford has 9,500 Flex units at the end of July. Considering that Ford was still rolling the models out at the end of July this could very well be a an aberration. My local dealer had 3 Flex for the last week and a half of July. As far as I could tell they did not sell any. But now that gas has dropped they have sold all three plus any that may have been ordered instead of bought from stock. The sales pace has picked up considerably so far this month. I predict at least 4,000 units will be sold in August, probably more. At the end of August the Flex should be carrying more like a 65 to 73 days supply and if gas continues to fall which it appears to be doing this days supply could drop even lower. Too early to tell the true demand for this vehicle. At the end of August we should all be in a better position to determine whether it is a success or not.

Bingo, we have a winner. It seems people who buy domestics look for things to go wrong. While the import buyers turn a blind eye to their problems and rationalize that it was there fault. Surely they must have done something wrong. No way could it have been the fault of mighty Toyota. Just like the engine sludge issue. I wonder how many of those people that were able to get in on the class action lawsuit went out and bought another Toyota. I imagine the settlement was basically a rebate towards the purchase of another Toyota anyway. A more interesting number would be how many of those that were denied inclusion in the class action suit actually own a Toyota today. And if you pay attention the majority of top tier imports (Toyota and Honda) always appear to have just been to the carwash. On the other hand you might see a brand new Fusion still with paper plates that looks like they just finished competing in some sort of mudding competition. I guess if you pay the import premium for a car you have extra incentive to take care of it. And the rationale for those who buy a domestic is that it's going to break down anyway so why should I take care of it. In their minds, changing the oil is only a suggestion by the manufacturer. I realize that this is a bit of an exaggeration but some of it definitely does ring true.

The police fleet here tried to save mucho money a few years ago and bought Impalas. It turned out to be a bad decision due to reliability. It turns out that the engines don't stand up to being run out of oil as well as the 4.6 does in the Fords. Turns out the new breed of Policeman are not very good at following maintenance schedules or at checking their oil levels on a semi-regular basis. Not surprising since many of the new coppers here have the look that would make one think if they weren't employed to arrest criminals they would most likely be criminals themselves. Additionally, the undercarriage couldn't support the engines in high speed chases. It seems crossing an intersection, with drainage canals, in high speed pursuit was very problematic. Of course, this was a few years ago. I'm sure GM has beefed up the support structure for Impalas in police duty since then.

Statistically they are equal. These numbers are based on 100 cars. In this study the difference per car was 1.59 defects for Toyota and 2.04 defects for Ford. However, in the Initial Quality Report for 2007 models the gap was nearly nonexistent. Toyota was at 1.00 and for at 1.05 or something like that. When you look at the things that are reported as problems it tells me that cars are built pretty damn good these days. In three years time the average Ford driver can identify just over 2 things that they view as a problem. And consider that your window fogging up can count as one of those problems. And if someone is bitching about their car pulling to the right or left they need to look in the mirror and try to determine what the hell they ran over to knock their car out of alignment. I myself have run off the road and hit a culvert going 40 mph and it didn't knock my Explorer out of alignment. But two years later in a very rare snowstorm (8 inches) I slid off the road and hit the curb at too high of a rate of speed and it damn sure did cause my car to pull to the right from then on. Were I to get a survey from JD Power I doubt I would blame Ford for the curb that I hit causing me to knock my car out of alignment. I would however blame Ford for causing it to snow in central Texas since they should have known that we don't know how to drive in the stuff. Well it was more ice than snow. Doesn't matter! I blame Ford!

I found this information at: www.theautochannel.com/news/2008/08/07/095711.html This is my first post. I have not figured out how to link.

Exactly what I was thinking. BTW, I found out what model ranked first for Mercury. It was the Monterey minivan. It turns out that the Mistubishi Lancer did very well in the sub-compact category.

The VDS study is out and FMC did pretty well. Highlights below. Top ten Rankings 1. Lexus 2. Mercury 3. Cadillac 4. Toyota 5. Acura 6. Buick 7. BMW 8. Lincoln 9. Honda 10. Jaguar Others 14. Ford (2 points above industry average) 21. Mazda 23. Chrysler 24. Dodge 26. Chevy 29. Volvo 30. Saturn 31. Jeep Last place went to Land Rover. Ford was the sixth highest ranked non-luxury brand. However, it was beaten by both Hyundai and Mitusbishi. Ford Ranger and Crown Vic both won their categories. Mercury had one model that won it's category but the model name was not given. So in the same year Mercury is the highest ranked non-luxury nameplate in the VDS, and the second ranked non-luxury nameplate in the IQS. Maybe a little advertising of these facts are in order.

Looks like Ford's fuel efficiency leadership along with HP leadership in the 4-cyl class of small utes will expire in September. I wonder when Honda will make improvements to keep up with Ford and Toyota. Toyota may be able to sway enough Honda loyalists to allow Escape to move into the first place in sales. At least Ford will get one month to be the efficiency and HP leader in this segment.

If the hybrid Fusion only gets 34 mpg you can nix all my earlier speculation about needing extra capacity for hybrid production. And at those numbers you can expect to be lucky to sell 25K year. I believe the hybrid Accord had numbers close to that and it was so succesful that Honda pulled the plug on it. However, considering that the Escape Hybrid gets 36 city and 31 hwy it seems reasonable to expect the Fusion to beat this. There was also an article about the Fusion Hybrid getting over 40 mpg city. It was these numbers that led me to believe that the Fusion hybrid was going to be an out of the park homerun. What's the weight difference between an Escape and Fusion? If it is considerably in the favor of the Fusion the 40 mpg would make sense.