Ford Motor Company February 2009 Sales

[smok]

The Flex is still really struggling to catch on, considering Chevy sold three times as many Traverses. The Flex appears to have been a very wasteful investment, they should have focused on a core customer which Ford has under-serviced for a very long time now.

 

I am still not clear what the Flex is supposed to be. The marketing message is unclear. My wife 'cringes' when I joke around and say the Flex will be our next vehicle. ;-) Let's face it, it's ugly and overpriced in most people's minds, not matter what Ford says.

 

The fugly Honda pilot which sold 6,678 is outselling the Flex. As far as Honda goes, the Acura TSX and Honda Fit are up. Everything else is down. Only sold 16k Accords.

 

As far as GM goes, not crazy over the Traverse, but that would be my pic over the Flex Also, I love the G8, nice looking car.

[Anthony]

I am still not clear what the Flex is supposed to be. The marketing message is unclear. My wife 'cringes' when I joke around and say the Flex will be our next vehicle. ;-) Let's face it, it's ugly and overpriced in most people's minds, not matter what Ford says.

 

While I don't particularly dislike the Flex, my wife has the same response as yours.

[silvrsvt]

I am still not clear what the Flex is supposed to be. The marketing message is unclear. My wife 'cringes' when I joke around and say the Flex will be our next vehicle. ;-) Let's face it, it's ugly and overpriced in most people's minds, not matter what Ford says.

 

The fugly Honda pilot which sold 6,678 is outselling the Flex. As far as Honda goes, the Acura TSX and Honda Fit are up. Everything else is down. Only sold 16k Accords.

 

As far as GM goes, not crazy over the Traverse, but that would be my pic over the Flex Also, I love the G8, nice looking car.

 

The thing is that the perception of the Flex being overpriced its hurting it..its not overpriced compared to what else is out there on the market its going up against. Unless your compairing to a 19K Minivan from Kia or Hyundai

[fgll]

It seems Feb 2008 was a very good sales month, but if you compare FORD´s sales numbers for Feb 09 vs Jan 09, you can see that almost all of FORD´s autos and trucks were higher in Feb.!

[buddysystem]

I am still not clear what the Flex is supposed to be. The marketing message is unclear. My wife 'cringes' when I joke around and say the Flex will be our next vehicle. ;-) Let's face it, it's ugly and overpriced in most people's minds, not matter what Ford says.

 

The fugly Honda pilot which sold 6,678 is outselling the Flex. As far as Honda goes, the Acura TSX and Honda Fit are up. Everything else is down. Only sold 16k Accords.

 

As far as GM goes, not crazy over the Traverse, but that would be my pic over the Flex Also, I love the G8, nice looking car.

 

My wife doesn't like the look of the Flex either and I like everything except the front end. Perhaps it would look better with a modern interpretation of the 1967 Country Squire front end with a forward leaning grill and stacked headlamps in a 2010 mustang sort of way.

[F250]

I think you're going a bit overboard there. Geesh. Enough with the doom-and-gloom.

 

You're right, go ahead and post sales stats from a worse Febuary Ford has had to prove last month wasn't that bad...

[ANTAUS]

Flex sold more than the Mustang, and even the MKS sold more than the Milan in the same showroom. I dont think any of these numbers should be taken seriously only because of the nature of the business at this time.It's all over the place so most you can do is just sit back and see what occured in the next months and wait till the dust settles a bit.

[Alex D.]

The Flex is still really struggling to catch on, considering Chevy sold three times as many Traverses. The Flex appears to have been a very wasteful investment, they should have focused on a core customer which Ford has under-serviced for a very long time now.

 

I don't think we can call the Flex a total failure. It does have the highest conquest rate of any other Ford vehicle (save the FEH) and the majority of models that have been sold have been higher series models like SEL and Limited. Sure, it isn't setting the world on fire in the sales department but it is bringing drivers of foreign vehicles into the Ford fold and we can assume is selling at a decent profit margin given that most of these sales have been ones with higher transaction prices. This article is a little old but I don't think the facts in it have changed too much since then. Also, what type of customer is Ford's core customer in your opinion, out of curiosity?

 

http://www.trucktrend.com/features/news/20...reat/index.html

Edited March 4, 2009 by Alex D.

[fordmantpw]

Flex sold more than the Mustang, and even the MKS sold more than the Milan in the same showroom. I dont think any of these numbers should be taken seriously only because of the nature of the business at this time.It's all over the place so most you can do is just sit back and see what occured in the next months and wait till the dust settles a bit.

 

Exactly...I'm just glad I'm not the person in charge of scheduling production for Ford trying to predict the market.

[TomServo92]

BTW, MKS outsold Genesis again by about a couple hundred. Or does this belong in the other thread?

 

And that's without the AWD Ecoboost version.

[rmc523]

Right now, the economy is a self fulfilling prophecy. The news reports ONLY how horrible everything is, and throws the D word around, which scares the living daylights out of most people. The buying public keeps reading/watching this depressing news, and even though most of them are not affected much at this point (except in their 401K's), thay start worrying that things are getting real bad............. and like the banks, hoard money............... and stop buying everything except the essentials.

 

This causes the manufacturers/distributors/retailers to lower production..................... which causes more layoffs and bad news.

 

Then, the sensationalist media, once again, does nothing but report all the new doom and gloom.................. which then perpetuates the cycle even further.

 

At some point, Joe Blow consumer will go................ "huh, even though all I read is depressing economic news, my life has not changed much................. I guess I really can go buy that ____________ that I have been wanting."

 

This is when the upward trend will happen.

 

There is such a thing as too much information, and having that information come to you too instantly. When that happens, you don't have time to truly look at things in perspective, and make educated decisions. All you can do is react.

 

That said, while I know what is going on, I don't immerse myself in it. At times, when I have done this, I got very depressed. Thus, I quit, and am a much happier person.

 

Look outside...................... it is a beautiful day out there.

 

I agree....well said. I think a big part of the problem we're currently facing is the media who always wants to report the doom and gloom.

 

I am still not clear what the Flex is supposed to be. The marketing message is unclear. My wife 'cringes' when I joke around and say the Flex will be our next vehicle. ;-) Let's face it, it's ugly and overpriced in most people's minds, not matter what Ford says.

 

The fugly Honda pilot which sold 6,678 is outselling the Flex. As far as Honda goes, the Acura TSX and Honda Fit are up. Everything else is down. Only sold 16k Accords.

 

As far as GM goes, not crazy over the Traverse, but that would be my pic over the Flex Also, I love the G8, nice looking car.

 

Hmmm, I love the/my Flex.

[ANTAUS]

I do have to add, I'm interested in seeing what players will have to bow out of our market...meaning, they won't be able to cut it. Example, Mitsu has got to go. They don't do anything special and everything is pretty much unreliable junk. I can't see how Suzuki will survive with such few sales.

 

But even in relation to Ford vehicles, I dont think some of these vehicles will be sustainable selling at 1000 units. I can see D3 staying since they share so many with other vehicles, but you have cases like the Mustang that will be hard pressed and will probably have a longer life cycle to stay in the black. And/or, the FOE vehicles that will share quite a bit of NA will have to come pretty soon enough to make it viable.

[mustang_sallad]

Facts: F-series is sold in more than the United States. Just counting the whole of North America (hey, you're counting an entire continent, why can't I?) I would suspect F-series sales far surpassed 30,900 units.

 

Where did I dredge up the 3000 number? Just a guestimate on my part, but looking at the rest of Ford's car sales numbers, I certainly wouldn't expect a whole lot more than that. The market for subcompacts in the U.S. is far smaller than it is in Europe. I suspect even you know this.

 

Ignoring Mexican F150 sales (don't know about that one, never been there), you're saying Canadians buy 2.5 times more F-150s per capita than Americans - my guess is he's right about the Fiesta outselling the F-150, and that's cool! It's a hot new Ford in a very relevant segment. I agree it won't sell as well here as it does in Europe, but I'll buy one when i get a chance!

 

People gotta stop quoting mustang numbers, who would buy a mustang now with the new one already announced, unveiled and on its way to production?

 

I really wish the Flex had come out maybe 2 or 3 years ago, I think it's a great vehicle, just a victim of timing. Hopefully it won't have died out by the time the economy turns around, whenever that'll be. Cause I think it could do well if people were actually buying new vehicles. But that's a good point, market share is telling, and if the Traverse is outselling it that bad, then there's something wrong clearly, and my guess is too many people are turned off by the styling. Too bad, i think it looks dope.

[rmc523]

I do have to add, I'm interested in seeing what players will have to bow out of our market...meaning, they won't be able to cut it. Example, Mitsu has got to go. They don't do anything special and everything is pretty much unreliable junk. I can't see how Suzuki will survive with such few sales.

 

Suzukis not so much, but I actually see a lot of Mitsu's running around....Lancers, Outlanders, Eclipses, Galants, etc.

[ANTAUS]

Yeah all that sub-prime customer lending they did 2 years ago explains alot of that...

[Noah Harbinger]

My wife doesn't like the look of the Flex either and I like everything except the front end. Perhaps it would look better with a modern interpretation of the 1967 Country Squire front end with a forward leaning grill and stacked headlamps in a 2010 mustang sort of way.

 

Anyone who uses a Country Squire as a model of what a vehicle should aspire to should be... "put out to pasture" would be the humane way to say it.

[7Mary3]

I like the way the Flex looks, but I am afraid it's a question no one asked. Ford should have been paying attention to the Chrysler Pacifica. Very similar to the Flex, the Pacifica never hit any of it's sales targets and was retired early.

[mettech]

agreed..those who think market share is golden are just plain stupid....$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ is whats needed not market share....

 

 

And when market share is falling, how does a company make a profit?

 

Cut overhead. :reading:

[silvrsvt]

I like the way the Flex looks, but I am afraid it's a question no one asked. Ford should have been paying attention to the Chrysler Pacifica. Very similar to the Flex, the Pacifica never hit any of it's sales targets and was retired early.

 

I think more fair compairson is to the Freestyle/Tauras X...the Pacifica wasn't anything special to start with styling wise and was just a 5/8th shrunkdown Minivan. I think the biggest problem with the Flex is that it just got launched at horrible time and we can't base sales numbers on it now, if it sold 2K more a month it would be fine.

 

The other fairly shocking thing is how bad the Edge sales have gone off a cliff...why? They are roughly 50% of what they where last year for the past couple...how are other mid-sized CUV doing in relation to it?

 

If there was ever a product that could use an Ecoboost I4, the Edge would be it...it would sell like hotcakes if it got 30+ MPG with a Egoboost I4 in it.

[98GMLS]

Canadian Figures, GM has been knocked out of the # 1 spot for the first time since 1949. Surprisingly it's not by Ford, but by dying Chrysler.

 

Chrysler 12,015

Ford 11,869

GM's 11,193

 

http://www.financialpost.com/scripts/story.html?id=1349295

[smok]

Canadian Figures, GM has been knocked out of the # 1 spot for the first time since 1949. Surprisingly it's not by Ford, but by dying Chrysler.

 

Chrysler 12,015

Ford 11,869

GM's 11,193

 

http://www.financialpost.com/scripts/story.html?id=1349295

 

Wow, look at Chrysler go. Big incentives and all, it`s good to see them at the top in Canada. One thing Chrysler is missing is a compact 4 door sedan. How stupid of them not to offer direct competition to the Focus, Civic, Corolla......How do they not offer a 4 door compact sedan, when there is clearly a huge market for them.

 

Overall, look who is making huge gains:

`Hyundai - February 2009 sales of 6,912 up 29.8% from February 2008`

This company has been impressive lately. Product after product...they just keep on getting better and better. I think even Honda and Toyota are getting nervous..

[NickF1011]

You're right, go ahead and post sales stats from a worse Febuary Ford has had to prove last month wasn't that bad...

 

:rolleyes:

 

I never said it was a good month. I said it was a terrible month. Is it depression-end-of-the-world-hide-your-children-fear-the-apocalypse bad? No. I'm tired of the Negative-Nancy attitude so many Americans have these days. Most of them seem content to just sit by and pray that the government saves them from their own pessimism.

Edited March 4, 2009 by NickF1011

[NickF1011]

Ignoring Mexican F150 sales (don't know about that one, never been there), you're saying Canadians buy 2.5 times more F-150s per capita than Americans - my guess is he's right about the Fiesta outselling the F-150, and that's cool! It's a hot new Ford in a very relevant segment. I agree it won't sell as well here as it does in Europe, but I'll buy one when i get a chance!

 

 

Where did I assert that Canadians were buying 2.5 times moe F-150's per capita than the U.S.? I'm guessing they do buy more of them per capita in general though, but this is also F-SERIES, not F-150. You're not talking about a lot of F-series to match the Fiesta numbers though. 6000 or so between Mexico and Canada to push it over the 30,000 mark. That sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

 

The main point I was making wasn't really which one sold more. The point I was really making was that it's silly to compare ALL of Europe to just the United States when it comes to sales numbers.

[NickF1011]

Suzukis not so much, but I actually see a lot of Mitsu's running around....Lancers, Outlanders, Eclipses, Galants, etc.

 

You see a lot of Galants? Strange. Even before the economy tanked, Mitsubishi was moving fewer than 1000 of them a month. I'd probably cringe if I saw their numbers now.

[mustangman9494]

gm down 48 percent toyota down 40 percent no one buying anything!!!