Working with Dealers

Our dealers are a critical part of our success and important economic contributors to the communities in which they work. They represent the face of Ford in communities across the U.S. and provide employment, tax support, community leadership and customer service.

At our current and expected future market share, we have too many dealers in the U.S. This has made it increasingly difficult to sustain a healthy and profitable dealer network. To address this overcapacity, we are partnering with our dealers to downsize and restructure the Ford, Lincoln and Mercury network in our largest 130 metropolitan market areas, with the goal of providing average-year sales of 1,500+ units for Ford dealers and 600+ units for Lincoln Mercury dealers. This will result in sustainable profits in both good and bad years. We are doing this while maintaining customer convenience factors such as driving distance, location and appealing facilities. We are funding these consolidation actions jointly with our dealers to protect our representation in the marketplace.

In the United States at year-end 2005, we had 4,396 Ford, Lincoln and Mercury dealers, with 2,242 of those dealers in our largest 130 markets. As of the end of January 2009, we had 3,764 Ford, Lincoln and Mercury dealers, a reduction of 632 dealers, or 14 percent. We will continue to work collaboratively with our dealers to reduce our dealer network to match our sales, market share and dealer sales objectives.