Ford’s 2017 sales saw a slight drop from 2016. SUV sales took off, while car sales dropped
Another year gone, another quarter million vehicles sold for Ford Motor Company. In total, Ford’s 2017 sales (with both the Ford and Lincoln brands) totaled a combined 2,586,715 cars and trucks. While that’s one 1.1% down over the previous year’s 2,614,697 sales, Ford is still firmly a true mass-market producer. An interesting trend (something of a recurring theme among all manufacturers) is just how their car sales fared. While crossovers and SUVs saw a 2.9% sales bump in 2017, sales of ordinary cars dropped off by a whopping 14.2%. For a big automaker like Ford, that means nearly 100,000 fewer cars were sold than last year.
Overall, trucks and SUVs took the show this year. Here are some of the biggest winners and losers of 2017 for the Ford brand (Lincoln is below):
Ford’s 2017 Sales Winners: Explorer, Edge
Ford set a record pace with their SUVs this year, and these two are leading the charge. On the smaller side, there’s the Ford Edge. Now, the Edge isn’t the highest-volume crossover Ford sells – that would be the Escape, which sold 308,296 units in 2017. However, the Edge did rack up the largest gain over the past year. In 2016, Ford shifted 134,588 Edge models. In 2017, they moved 142,603 – a 6.0% increase. December was also a good month for the Edge, as it tallied up 13,660 sales, a 7.6% improvement over last December’s 12,691 sales.
Ford’s oldest current SUV offering, the Explorer, also did well this year. They sold 238,056 units, a 10.1% increase over 2016. In December 2017 alone, they moved 33.3% more units than they did in 2016 – 25,375 versus 19,030 in 2016.
Ford’s 2017 Sales Losers: All their cars
Not a single Ford brand car saw a sales bump in 2017. Some managed a graceful level of declining sales, while others more or less fell off a cliff compared to last year.
Take the Focus, for instance. It managed a 6.2% decrease in 2017 (158,385 units) over 2016’s 168,789 units sold. The Focus is still Ford’s fifth best-selling model, but its sales have taken a bit of a tumble in the past year. It did see a bit of a bump in December 2017 however (11,237 sold versus 10,242 in December 2016 – a 9.7% increase).
The Fusion, on the other hand, fell much less gracefully. Its sales were down 21.1% in 2017, with 209,623 sold versus 265,840 in 2016. Even at that rate, Ford shifted more Fusions than some automakers’ models combined, but that’s still a drastic shift.
Lincoln’s Sales Hold Steady
While sedans, on the whole, seem to be on the decline, that’s not the case with the Continental. Lincoln moved a massive 12,012 units last year. That’s an increase of 128.3% over 2016’s sales of 5,261. The MKC did well, while the MKX and new Navigator held firm over 2016. In 2017, the MKC sold 27,048 units (5.8% up over 2016), the MKX sold 31,031 units (0.2% up over 2016), and the Navigator sold 10,523 units (1.0% increase over 2016).
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