Ford October Auto Sales Better Than Expected, but Still Weak

The analysts at Kelley Blue Book expected for sales of 186,000 units and Edmunds.com had forecast sales of 185,000.

Sales of Ford’s best-selling F-Series pickups have dropped 0.5% in the first 10 months of 2014, from 623,309 a year ago to 620,447. In September, year-to-date sales were down 2.5%, so Ford made something of a comeback in October, at least as far as its F-Series pickups are concerned.

The other solid performer in October was the Escape compact SUV, which saw October sales up 12% compared with October 2013 to 24,919 units. That is even higher than the Fusion compact, which sold 22,846 units in the month.

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Ford’s car sales fell 11.5% compared with October 2013 and were down 3.8% for the first 10 months of the year. Utility vehicle sales were up 10.3% for the month and 2.9% for the year. Truck sales were down 2.6% for the month and down 0.3% for the year.

The small drop in truck sales doesn’t sound too bad until we recall that truck sales usually grow. It is the lost growth that is hurting Ford now. The good news for Ford is that F-150 owners appear to be loyal to the brand even though both the Ram pickups from Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. (NYSE: FCAU) and the General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) Silverado and Sierra models are picking up some market share.

The company said that interest in the new F-150 aluminum bodied pickups is very high. In the five weeks to October 30, 179,000 people had used Ford’s online configuration and pricing tool to put together a new F-150 truck. More than 200,000 have given Ford permission to send them more information when the truck is available, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Ford’s shares traded lower by about 0.8% Monday morning, at $13.98 in a 52-week range of $13.26 to $18.12.

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