Ford Motor Company U.S. total March sales of 244,167 vehicles are up 3 percent from a year ago. Retail sales of 166,030 vehicles are up 3 percent and represent the best March result in eight years. Ford Sales Analyst, Erich Merkle, says it’s the best March retail results in eight years and one of the vehicles responsible for the sales increase is the F-Series selling more than 70,000 units, giving Ford their best-selling month since 2008.

“Based on Polk retail registration data, we have seen the half-ton V6 pickup truck segment grow 600 percent over the last three-years. F-150 is responsible for 91 percent of that growth and this provides F-150 with 78 percent share of the V6 half-ton pickup segment.”

Merkle says retail sales really got going in the second half of the month of March, setting them up for what they expect to be a strong sales month in April 2014.

“Weather was, no question, it was a factor and it weighed on the industry in January and February, and now as we got into the second half of March and spring started approaching many areas of the country, we saw sales respond. So we’re very pleased and we estimate that the overall industry came in at the 16 million range.”

According to Merkle, Ford Fusion led the way in sales with its best sales month since 2005.

“We sold almost 33,000 Fusions in March, and that was up 9 percent over a year ago. Where we saw the greatest growth was in places like the West, so the West was growing at the fastest rate at about 22 percent in March year-over-year, retail sales. In California, retail sales in California were up 32 percent over a year ago, so we continue to make very good inroads particularly in the Western region of the country.”

According to Merkle, Lincoln MKZ continues to demonstrate popularity among buyers, but could still be better.

“Lincoln still has a long way to go, but we’re very pleased with the fact that MKZ had its best sales month ever, in the month of March. Since its launch in late 2005 it beat every month since that time with over 4,000 MKZs sold.”

Merkle says inventories are right where they want them. The weather played a major factor two months ago and gave the impression they were over stocked, however that is not the case.

“For this month we’re at 71 days, so we’ve come down from over a hundred days in January down to 71 days today as we start to approach the spring selling season. We’re a little higher than we were last year, but that is completely planned, because last year we started to run very thin on stock, particularly in the third quarter over the summer months of July and August, so we want to have a little more on hand.”