Ford (F): January Sales Off 42%, Will Need Bailout

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Apr 27, 9:36PM EDT · Published Feb 3, 12:34PM EST

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The Ford (F) media relations department writes the most misleading press releases of any large company in the US. Ford’s January sales were down 42%. The entire first section of the document on January sales covered how the firm’s F-150 trucks and Fusion models picked up market share.

The PR should have said "Ford Will Need Bailout Cash."

It is hard to imagine how a large car company could lose 42% of its unit sales in one month. Backing out numbers for Volvo and the drop at Ford was 39%.

Most of the damage was done in Ford’s sports utility segment where sales fell 53%. Sales for vehicles produced under the Mercury brand were off 44%, and units sold by the Ford flagship division fell almost 40%.

Ford may insist that it can make it to the end of the year without money from the federal government, but if sales remain off by these amounts, that is nearly impossible to believe. The UAW would have to allow Ford to cut massive numbers of jobs and change pension programs. Suppliers, many of which are nearly insolvent themselves, would have to cut their prices by unreasonable amounts.

Ford is about to join GM (GM) and Chrysler in the federal government bread line.

Douglas A. McIntyre

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.