Ford expects a million for '07

All the portents are clear. Australians will purchase a million new vehicles for 2007.

According to Ford Australia's Vice President Marketing & Sales, Mark Winslow, with total sales YTD already 41,000 units ahead of last year, the market would have to average no more than about 945,000 seasonally adjusted sales for the rest of the year to offset the buoyant first half.

In the words of Winslow, "I think we'd all say that's quite unlikely at this point."

"The RBA (Reserve Bank of Australia) has never put interest rates up in an election year... Look at the Australian dollar; that continues to be very strong. That's likely to continue, making imports so much cheaper. All the fundamentals are there for the industry…"

The strength of the dollar and the continuing low interest rates remain a key factor in the market's current love affair with the motor car (more here).

"Private buyers are coming into the market because they have money to spend" said Mr Winslow.

"Interest rates are low and there's certainly value in the market place for them."

Responding to the suggestion that importers such as Mazda might strike trouble importing enough cars to meet demand and carry the market across the million-unit threshold, Winslow said: "We haven't seen any evidence coming through our shipping companies to indicate that would be a problem for us."

"Clearly Mazda is a full importer and maybe its issues are different from ours."

Nonetheless, Ford has experienced its own supply problems -- affecting the Ranger LCV and Fiesta light car (pictured). As Winslow put it, commenting about the Ranger: "4x4 is so specialised, it's always difficult to get your launch stock right. We don't have enough 4x4s and we're short on some 4x2s."

Ford is expecting to rectify the Ranger (pictured) supply issues by the end of the third quarter of this year.

Reflecting the shortage of stock, Fiesta's market share for '07 YTD shrunk to 5.1 per cent of the light car segment in a booming market, compared with 5.8 per cent for the same period last year.

"We had a four per cent share on Fiesta in the month of June, which is disappointing by our standards...we are short on the five-door (variants) which are our focus model," Winslow said.

The supply problem was further exacerbated for Ford by the run-out program for the Focus small car (LS model Zetec pictured), which was more successful than expected. Ford is anxiously awaiting the LT model Focus -- and especially the diesel Focus TDCi, which is expected to "really drive some volume" in the market.

Overall, Ford's in a happy situation where demand for the smaller cars and LCVs exceed supply. Unlike those models, the locally produced Falcon models are a case for the defence.

Ford has committed to selling 3000 units of the Falcon each month between now and the launch of the BF II replacement, codenamed Orion. Sales of the Falcon for June amounted to 3206 units and Ford contends that the recently announced specification upgrade will help to bolster sales of the large car between now and early next year, when Orion is launched.

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