2021 Ford F-150 Lariat
Ford
US car sales for Ford Motor declined 15.6% last year due to the coronavirus pandemic, the decline in commercial fleet sales and tight inventories of F-150 pickup trucks.
Sales of the popular full-size pickup truck plummeted by about 33% in the fourth quarter from the same time last year, the automaker reported Tuesday. The lower sales were attributed to the continued effects of Covid-19 plant closures last spring, as well as a switch in production facilities to produce the redesigned F-150.
“We are optimizing production at both plants at the moment and it is just a matter of getting more F-150s to our dealers’ lots,” Erich Merkle, Ford’s head of US sales analysis, told CNBC. He said stocks of the F-150 reached 141,000 units last year, up from 267,000 a year earlier.
Ford’s sales decline in 2020 is expected to be in line with the overall U.S. auto industry, which is projected to be about 15% lower to 14.5 million vehicles. That would be the lowest domestic sales since 2012. It also ends an unprecedented five-year sales increase of more than 17 million units.
Ford truck sales fell 11.3% in 2020, while SUVs were 9.7% lower year over year. Passenger car sales, which Ford is discontinuing, aside from major models such as the Mustang, plummeted by 44.7% compared to 2019.
Andrew Frick, Ford vice president of sales in the US and Canada, believes the company is well positioned from a product standpoint this year as it moves away from passenger cars.
“The fourth quarter marked a turning point for Ford in our transition from automobiles to a much greater focus on iconic trucks and SUVs to better serve our customers,” he said in a press release. “We are well positioned to see the benefits of our focused efforts in 2021.”