The European car market seems to be slowly emerging from years of falling sales and general ambivalence towards new vehicles, and Ford is leading the way. Ford reports that April was its best overall sales in its 20 traditional European markets since 2009, with commercial vehicles in particular reaching a level not seen since 1993. But it’s Ford’s bounty of performance cars that has the order books filling up.
Ford’s vehicle sales in April were up 6.4% to 113,400 vehicles in Ford’s 20 traditional markets, and across Ford’s 50 European markets overall sales were up 4.7% to 129,600 (Ford is a bit player in many markets in southern and eastern Europe especially). Ford’s commercial vehicles division led the way, making Ford the number one commercial vehicle brand in Europe through the first four months of 2016 with a 12.3% share of the market.
Ford’s commercial sales were up nearly 19% compared to April 2015, though the automaker can also thank SUVs like the Kuga for helping boost sales. The Kuga had its best-ever April sales of 9,800 vehicles. Similarly, sales of Ford’s performance cars, including the Fiesta ST, Focus ST, Focus ST diesel, Focus RS and Mustang rose 91% year-to-date. Ford says it also has 6,832 orders for the Focus RS since last September, and a whopping 17,707 orders for Mustang have been placed since the third quarter of 2015.
Despite the delay in getting these cars to customers, the Mustang still managed to be the best-selling sports car in Germany last month. The Old World has a bit of Blue Oval fever right now, and the only sure is more Mustang, it would seem.