Retail sales totaled 168,543 vehicles for the month – an 8 percent decrease. Fleet sales of 45,939 vehicles, including daily rental, commercial and government segments, were down 10 percent.  Here to explain is Ford Sales Analyst, Erich Merkle.

Cut#1 “While the overall industry is down, we think that through the remainder of the year, we’ll continue to see strong retail industry sales, but they will be down versus 2015 overall, and we do expect in 2017  for the U.S. industry to be again be strong, but at a little bit of a lower level than what we’re going see this year.” :21 sec.

Ford F-Series sales were down 6 percent,  but Merkle says we need to look at the retail side of the F-Series sales.

Cut#2 “If we start taking a look at our August retail.  F-Series had its best retail sales month all year.  So we continue to see really good strength for F-Series but there is no question that we’re coming into some really difficult year-over-year comparisons, both with our pick-up and also for the industry overall.” :18 sec.

On the brighter side of August sales sits both Lincoln and the Ford Transit, which according to Merkle,  is America’s best-selling van.

Cut#3 “Ford vans overall were up 13 percent in August, with 20,355 vans sold, and that was our best August in company history.  And really that’s all being driven by strong Transit sales, which have really been driving the gains.  Transit was up 17 percent in August, with almost 12 thousand Transits sold for the month and it continues to be America’s best-selling van even outselling today’s mini-vans.” :26 sec.

Lincoln sales rose 7 percent in the U.S. in August versus a year ago.

Cut#4 “We had a great month with Lincoln again.  Lincoln sales were up at retail about 10 percent in August, and what we feel is that likely outpaced our estimates in terms of the overall luxury market, which was likely down approximately 4 to 5 percent for the month in August.” :17 sec.

Merkle says what really is helping Lincoln is the MKX, which continues to lift the brand.

Cut #5 “We saw sales increase of 50 percent for MKX and retail sales increases were even stronger at 55 percent.  The new MKZ is doing very well on dealer lots, it was up 8 percent at retail and we’re just now starting to ship the all-new Continental out to our dealers and they are really looking forward to it.” 17 sec.