Ford claims sales win for Falcon sedan

Ford President Marin Burela was ebullient at the company's monthly sales briefing this afternoon.

Sales of Ford's Falcon large car have dropped by less than 1400 units for the year to date 2009, versus the same period last year. That wouldn't normally be reason to gloat, but based on Holden selling over 5000 fewer Commodores over the same period, Ford can rightly claim increased market share for the Falcon in the large-car segment -- particularly when Toyota also sold over 5000 fewer Aurions and even Honda saw sales of the Accord drop by about 1600 units.

"The most outstanding news for us, in October..." Burela said, "Our Falcon sedan actually outsold the Commodore sedan in the month of October.

"Now I'm going from my memory, Falcon finished up at about 2460 sedans and Commodore, to the best of my recollection, finished up at 2425 or 2426 -- somewhere around that number. So we outsold them by about 35 or 36 cars but one would have been enough."

The Ford President also pointed to neck-and-neck sales of the Falcon Ute versus the Holden Ute for the year to date. Ford's LCV outsold the Holden by a substantial margin last year, but as of the end of November, the difference in sales between the two is as little as 46 units, with the advantage to Holden (9411 versus 9365 for the Ford).

There's just one Falcon variant that's not kicking goals -- the Falcon wagon. Still making do in BF Series III guise, where the sedan and ute are both selling in FG form, the wagon did sell about 400 units last month -- more than sales of Mondeo liftback and wagon combined.

It's less than half the number of utes sold though, and when Ford's plant in Broadmeadows is having trouble meeting the demand for higher-profit cars such as the G Series and XR Falcon sedans, the continuing existence of the wagon must remain in question? Marin Burela hinted that the Mondeo wagon could soak up some of that consumer demand -- if Ford decides to head down that path.

"The Falcon wagon has been a great vehicle for us, and we're continuing to monitor and study that," he said.

"The great challenge that we have there is to make sure that we're not competing with ourselves in the actual market. And what we're now starting to see is that more and more of our customers that have really bought into the Falcon wagon proposal, are now looking at the Mondeo and saying: 'wow, the Mondeo is really outstanding'...

"We're talking to our customers and asking the question: 'Well, what is it that you want?'.

"We haven't made any firm or definitive decision on anything... we will probably be in a position by the end of this year -- if not then, certainly in early January -- to be able to make a declaration in where we're going with the Falcon wagon."

Asked whether there was a particular tipping point for that decision, Burela basically attributed that to Ford's current relations with its customers, particularly those fleet buyers who have supported the Falcon wagon in the past -- rather than any specific engineering considerations.

"We tend to sell somewhere in the order of 400 to 500 wagons per the month... What we're really looking at here is how do we make sure that we do not disappoint, that we in fact, delight and create a reason for people to stay with wagon -- whether that be Falcon or Mondeo."

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