Signs That Ford (F) Sales Are Dipping

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Apr 28, 4:54AM EDT · Published Jun 10, 4:12AM EDT

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Over the past week, the 24/7 Wall St.–The Channel Checkers poll surveyed Ford dealerships to gauge business trends at the ten retailers. We asked the following questions:

1. What is the best selling vehicle currently?

2. Are there any special deals or promotions now?

3. Do you offer free satellite radio?

4. Has there been an increase in sales in the past few months?

• 48% of respondents reported that the Ford Fusion was the best selling model at their dealership right now. 32% reported that the Ford F-150 truck was the top seller.

• 48% reported special financing or promotional deals at their location. 52% said there were not. The most common offer was 0% financing and cash back.

• 40% of dealers reported offering free satellite radio packages as part of a car or truck sale. 60% were not offering satellite radio as a freebie.

• 64% of respondents said that there had not been an increase in sales the past few months, while 36% reported that there had been. This answer set is worse than our March survey where 57% saw sales down in the past few months.
Conclusion of Channel Check: Ford sales appear to be a barbell with sales of fuel efficient cars and non-fuel efficient trucks leading the way. It appears that mid-range performance cars have vanished from the sales arena. Promotional activity looks light, which suggests that Ford may be protecting prices on its hot selling vehicles effectively. The one negative from this survey is the deterioration of sales from our March survey.

For access to the underlying survey or for more information, please contact Jason Katz at 415.867.0959 or [email protected]

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.