BRENTWOOD, Essex, 6 November, 2008 – Consumer demand for Ford's exciting range of cars helped Ford register a 16.6 per cent share of October's new car sales – an increase of over three percentage points compared with the same month last year.
While the UK's overall appetite for new cars shrunk by 22 per cent in October, compared with last year, Ford outperformed the market by over 16 per cent to limit the negative impact on the blue oval brand to a 5.7 per cent dip in volumes.
Latest figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders show that, of the 128,350 new cars sold last month, 21,300 were Ford models – with sales of the Fiesta,
C-MAX and Mondeo actually exceeding those of a year ago.
The acclaimed all-new Ford Fiesta drove customer demand with its combination of price, style and fuel efficiency. For every one of the 3,500 new Fiestas delivered in October, two more customer orders are in the pipeline. Half of Fiesta buyers are choosing high series Zetec and Titanium models.
The Ford C-MAX multi-activity vehicle and Ford Mondeo grew year-on-year sales by 25 per cent and 13.7 per cent respectively.
Retail customers continue to be attracted to the Ford brand, which currently boasts its youngest ever model line-up. Ford took 13.7 per cent of October's retail new car sales – a year-on-year rise of four percentage points, and 1,845 more cars than the blue oval's nearest rival.
Ford also led the fleet market, which was buoyed by the arrival of new Ford Galaxy and
S-MAX variants emitting under 160g CO2/km. With tax based on emissions, this latest frugal 2.0 TDCi diesel engine delivers savings of over £200 a year to the company car driver and a 20 per cent write-down allowance to his or her employer (instead of the ten per cent allowance on purchases of cars emitting over 160g).
Roelant de Waard, Ford of Britain chairman and managing director, said: "Our new Fiesta is already proving a big hit with private buyers, and we are selling every one we can get. We are seeing something similar with business customers as we introduce our lower CO2 diesel engine into our larger cars, which is helping beat the worst of the current downturn – and we still have the all-new Ka to look forward to from January."
Ford's strong October performance in the face of another difficult month for the industry took the company's year-to-date car market share up to 14.9 per cent (14.5 per cent at the same point in 2007). Sales of Ford cars with CO2 emissions under 120g/km are up by 32 per cent so far this year.
Together with commercial vehicles, Ford's share of the UK's total vehicle market stands at 16.2 per cent, up 0.3 percentage points compared with the same month last year.
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Editor's note: Company car tax savings quoted for 40 per cent taxpayer