Burela predicts 920k sales or higher for 2010
Ford President anticipates soft market in first quarter of next year, followed by reboundThe president of Ford Australia, Marin Burela, admits that his glass is half-full. While the FCAI (Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries) has been predicting an 880,000-sales market for this year, Burela anticipates the end result for 2009 will be more like 40,000 units higher.
"The industry overall, for the full year, will probably finish up somewhere around the 920,000 to 930,000 -- somewhere in that sort of range -- because we've seen a significant sort of uplift in the last few months, which is really helping all of the manufacturers, as well as the importers," Burela told the media last week, during Ford's monthly sales briefing for October.
"We think that the industry in 2010 first quarter will be softer than obviously the fourth quarter of this year, but we believe that the industry will then pick up in the second quarter and through the rest of 2010.
"My view is that the industry will be softer in the first quarter... mainly because we'll see the effect of product being pulled into the last quarter of this year. But if we look at 2010, my sense of it is that the industry will fall somewhere between 920 and 950,000.
"Let's just wait and see, but... I would not be surprised if we don't start to see some '930s', '940s' on a regular basis when we get into the second quarter and the second half of 2010."
By this, Burela is referring to the 'SAARs' (the Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate of sales posited each month).
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