Ford predicts increase in truck sales for June
Wednesday, June 29th, 2011 | Car News, General
Sales of small cars will back off slightly and pickups will show an uptick when the auto industry reports its June U.S. sales on Friday, said Ford Motor Co. sales analyst George Pipas.
Compact and subcompact cars started the year representing 18.7 percent of total U.S. sales but by March grew to 24 percent and then inched to 24.2 percent in April when gasoline prices created a scare at the pump.
In May small cars accounted for 23 percent of total sales but June figures will show them dropping further to about 22.7 percent, Pipas told reporters today.
The number of customers buying smaller more fuel-efficient vehicles should still be a couple percentage points above June 2010, he said.
Small cars sales tend to be seasonal but the analyst said he thinks they may not drop as much in the fourth quarter this year as they have historically because gas prices remain top-of-mind for consumers even though they have eased somewhat.
“Small cars will continue to trend lower (in the second half of the year),” Pipas said, “but not as fast as they usually do.”
Part of the reason is consumers who could not buy a small Japanese car because of earthquake-related shortages have put off that purchase until later in the year.
And companies like Honda Motor Co. are encouraging this with incentives that will remain in effect until the fourth quarter.
Pipas said 40 percent of Ford Focus and Fiesta cars are sold by the time they arrive at the dealership.
Ford is benefiting from Japanese shortages largely because they just have a bigger piece of the pie, not because they are winning over a huge numbers of sales, he said.
Ford expects its June sales to be higher than a year ago and potentially higher than May. Market share should remain about 17 percent for the Dearborn automaker. Lincoln sales also should hold their own, Pipas said.
At the other end of the spectrum, fullsize pickup sales rebounded in June to about 11.3 percent of total industry sales from a low of 9.3 percent in April, Pipas said.
Ford is not changing its forecast of 13 million to 13.5 million sales for the year.
And Pipas said the industry will continue to be marked by low incentives with inventories tight of many vehicles.
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