DEARBORN, Mich., July 1, 2016 - Ford Motor Company’s first-half total U.S. sales grew 5 percent with 1,353,048 vehicles sold – its best first-half performance since 2006.  According to Erich Merkle, Ford Sales analyst, June sales were up 6 percent, with 240,109 vehicles sold.

Cut#1” Ford is the number one selling brand of truck in America and in continues to extend that lead this year.  We sold over a half-million Ford brand trucks throughout the country, that’s a 13 percent gain.  The real driver behind that, especially in June was F-Series, cause F-Series was up 29 percent and it’s really driven by F-150 performance which was up 40 percent.”:27sec

Why the strong performance on behalf of trucks,  what’s the big picture.

Cut#2”We make a very capable, very efficient truck, we just sold over 1 million EcoBoost F-150’s  since its introduction in 2011, and that’s really what people are gravitating towards.  Truck buyers want capability and they also like the fuel economy that they’re getting with EcoBoost.”:19 sec.

Let’s talk about SUV sales and how well they did in the first-half.

Cut#3 “The first half for Ford Brand SUV’s was a record.  We’ve never sold more SUV’s in the first half of a year in our company history.” 10 sec.

Ford commercial van performance grew 17 percent in the first half with a total of 128,378 vehicles sold – largely driven by Transit’s 36 percent gain in the same period with 78,480 sold. Merkle says Transit sales increased 19 percent in June with 14,437 sold.

Cut#4”Transit is now the best-selling van in America, whether that be a van or a mini-van, Transit has quickly grown to a very prominent position in terms of van sales.” 12 sec.

Lincoln continues to out-perform itself, by how much and do you see this trend continuing.

Cut#5: Well we’re having great success with Lincoln with our newest products.  If you look at the first half for Lincoln sales, we were up 13 percent  in the first half.  Now this compares to a Luxury Industry that’s flat to maybe down a little bit in the first half the year.  So we’re real pleased with Lincoln’s performance in the first half and a lot of that is being driven by our newest product, where we look at MKX which was up 27 percent for the month,  we had MKZ, which was up 9 percent in the month of June and MKC was up 2 percent even with the growth that we’re seeing out of MKX.” :33 sec.