Ford Motor Company U.S. sales totaled 187,000 vehicles in November, down 2 percent from a year ago. Here to explain the anticipated decline, is Ford Sales Analyst Erich Merkle who says Ford Motor Company is in transition with the Ford F-150, and will continue to be through the first quarter of 2015.

“When you start taking a look, we just got Dearborn Truck up and running and we’ve  still have Kansas City to go here in the first quarter of next year, so while we’re going through that transitionery process we’re going to be very mindful and manage our incentive spend relative to our inventory levels, to make sure that we’re able to maintain inventory volumes as we move through the entire transition,  which will take us into next year.” :26 sec.

On the brighter side of sales there were some record setting numbers in the SUV segment.

“The Ford Escape sold 25,528 vehicles,  it was up 22 percent and that was its best sales month in its 14-year history.  The Ford Escape sales go all the way back to 2000.”  :13 sec.

The larger SUV, Ford Explorer had sales of 14,949 vehicles marking a 13 percent increase, according to Merkle.

“It was our best November performance for Explorer going all the way back to 2004, so the new Explorer just continues to make gains in the market place.  There is no other SUV since its launch in 1990 that have sold more than the Ford Explorer. We’ve sold over 7-million Ford Explorers since 1990.”  :21 sec.

Merkle says the eye-candy of the lot is the 2015 Mustang, which are flying of dealer lots as fast as they make them.

“So when you take a look at Mustang sales for the month we totaled  8,728 Mustangs, that’s a 62% increase and we’ve performed so well in markets like Texas and California.  Texas is our largest Mustang Market and retail sales they were up 46% and in California our second largest market for Mustang we saw sales increase 76%,   8-days to turn for Mustang right now on dealer lots, so they’re moving very quickly for us and it’s really welcome news.” :32 sec.

Lincoln sales were also up over 20 percent, which is a promising sign for their Luxury brand, according to Merkle.

“The brand was up 21 percent and year to date it’s up 15 %.   MKC had another month over 2000 vehicles, so we had another really strong month for MKC sales.  And when you look at Navigator, Navigator we sold 1,433 Navigators that was up 88%, that’s our new Navigator, so it’s resonating very well with the luxury customers.” :27 sec.