Ford Transit vans U.S. sales grew 6 percent last month with 10,799 vans sold. Overall Ford U.S. September sales totaled 204,447 vehicles, an 8 percent decline versus a year ago.  Here to discuss September sales is Ford Sales Analyst, Erich Merkle.

Cut#1 ”So there were a couple factors that really shaped September for us.  One of them is Ford had its strongest year-over-year comparison of the year in September, so we had an incredibly good September a year ago where retails sales and overall sales were up 23 percent, so we had a very difficult year-over-year comparison.  In addition to that, and as we have been talking about throughout the year,  our sales for the year would be more front end loaded with fleet,  but the second half of the year the fleet sales would dissipate and that’s exactly what we saw.” :34 sec.

However, according to Merkle, F-Series retail sales continue to increase on a monthly basis.

Cut#2 “Since September we had our best retail sales performance for F-Series for  the year.  Now we are going up against a really strong comp from a year ago, but even so our retail share in September of the full size pick-up truck market was up, we estimate just over one point of share compared to year ago so we continue to do very well and F-Series is really driving our average transaction prices.” :28 sec.

According to Merkle, the average transaction prices in September were  primarily driven by F-Series, with the introduction of the all new Super Duty,  was up eleven hundred dollars, versus a year ago.

Cut#3 “Your transaction price is what you are transacting that product for,  so when you look at F-series our transaction prices on F-series were three thousand dollars higher than they were a year ago, so we’re getting three thousand dollars more per truck as customers are demanding a very rich mix of our all-new SuperDuty.   Eighty percent last month of our SuperDuty sales,  retail sales, were Lariat, King Ranch and Platinum, very high-end pickup trucks.” :30 sec.

Sales for Lincoln were also up for the month of September,  according to Merkle.

Cut#4  “So when you take a look at September our retail sales results, for Lincoln,  were up eight percent.  And if you look at the overall brand strength of the brand year-to-date,  Lincoln sales are up nine percent, and when you compare that to the overall segment, the premium segment, the premium segment is actually down about two to three percent this year, so we’re actually running against the grain, if you will with Lincoln and we are one of the few Luxury brands that are up this year, and what’s really driving that has been things like  MKX and the MKC, which were up again last month, but also last month we introduced  our all new Lincoln Continental.  We sold 775 of them last month and we continue to expand and getting more and more of our inventory out to all of the dealers across America.  But right now that car is really hot  as it’s turning just six days on dealer lots so we’re very pleased with the performance of Lincoln  and especially excited about the all new Continental.” :62 sec.