Ford banks on new Falcon to halt sales slide

Ford has high hopes that the arrival of its new Orion Falcon next year will help halt its sales slide that, compared to 2006, has seen the Melbourne-based manufacturer's total market share fall by 15 per cent.

According to the official VFACTs figures, Ford's total year-to-date market share has dropped from 12.2 per cent to 10.3 per cent, while the company's volume has fallen by 8020 units for the same period.

This makes Ford the only carmaker in the top ten to have fallen behind last year's totals in what will be a record million-plus vehicle market this year.

Predictably, Ford is putting the blame for its sales woes on the ever-decreasing volume of large car sales suggesting that Falcon, being the oldest car in a shrinking market segment, is no longer holding its own against the newer Commodore and Toyota Aurion (more here).

Year to date, Ford's large car is off the pace by just over 8000 units, and with a YTD total of 28,021 has only sold just over half the volume of Holden's Commodore, which currently sits at 49,081.

Talking at this week's Focus Coupe-Cabriolet launch in Adelaide, Ford's vice president marketing and sales, Mark Winslow, suggests that the new car due next year will resolve this problem. Winslow told Carsales Network that the company expected to be able to sell at least 43,000 units a year once the new car is in the market.

"It [the large car market] may be 13 per cent of the market -- it used to be 23 -- but it is still going to be a million unit industry going forward and we can't see that backing off. So you have still got 130,000 cars out there that we believe we can get between one third and 40 per cent of with the new model," he says.

This would appear to be a big ask -- Holden has only increased its total volume on Commodore by 2676 units this year. Winslow's estimates would see Falcon post a 10,000 unit turnaround on this year.

However, Falcon is not Ford's only problem. Indeed, all of the Blue Oval's major product lines -- aside from the new Ranger one-tonne ute -- are down in volume on a year-to-date basis.

According to Winslow, the small Fiesta has been hamstrung by supply problems, however, the fact that Focus sales have not increased in a market segment that has risen by just over 10,000 units or 5.4 per cent YTD remains somewhat baffling.

Despite the Focus having been in the marketplace now for five years, Winslow says that buyers still didn't recognise the nameplate and, indeed, still had a problem recognising that Ford actually had a small car range.

In order to try and rectify this, Ford has been running a branding advertising campaign under the tag 'Everyone's journey is different' to help "transition" the perception of the brand (says Winslow) from a large car maker into a full-line manufacturer and importer.

"We have taken the view that we really need to tell people on a longterm basis that Ford really has great small cars. We haven't been known for that over the past 10-15 years and as the market changes we really need to tell people that.

"When you consider that there are 23 or so entrants in that market and [you say] surely people should know about the Focus, our research is telling us that that is really not the case. Ford is still known for large cars and SUVs so that was the job we had at hand to change the perception of the brand."

But Winslow admits that brand perceptions still don't sell cars and now the challenge will be to make sure people know about the spec and most importantly pricing of cars like the Fiesta and Focus to try and increase volume.

"We can do better and purely and simply, we don't have a choice."

To comment on this article click here