DEARBORN, Mich., April 3, 2017 -- Ford F-Series sales grew 10 percent in March, but overall Ford Motor Company U.S. March 2017 sales totaled 236,250 vehicles – a 7 percent decline versus a year ago.  Here to reflect on those numbers is Ford sales analyst Erich Merkle.

 Ford F-Series sales totaled over 81,000 pickups, which is a 10 percent increase versus a year ago. According to Merkle it was Ford’s best March performance in over a decade.

Cut #1 “What’s really driving that, we saw increases yes for F-150, but we also strong increases for our all new Super Duty, where retail sales were up 26 percent last month, with gains coming from every region of the country.” :15 sec.

Merkle says Ford saw its strongest gain for Super Duty coming out of the West region, which was up 40 percent. 

Cut #2 “ Our largest region for pickup  trucks in the central region of the country retail sales for Super Duty were up 32 percent.” :08 sec.

So how do you explain a 7 percent decline versus a year ago?

 Cut #3 “When you take a look at the vehicles,  what we were coming up against, was a very tough year-over-year fleet comparison.  So when you look at where we are our fleet sales were down 17 percent, over a year ago, it just so happens that March of last year was our strongest fleet sales month of the year last year, with our fleet volumes being very front-end loaded at the beginning of 2016, so we’re coming up against a really tough year-over-year comparison when we compare it to March of last year, in terms of fleet volume.” :31 sec.

Merkle says it’s important to look at the big picture when it comes to sales numbers.

Cut #4 “If you take a look at the retail side of our business, it was down 2 percent, but with that 2 percent we also saw a significant increase in average transaction prices, so our average transaction prices were up eighteen-hundred dollars, year-over-year, and that’s about 9 times the rate of growth for the overall industry. :19 sec.

Ford Expedition sale grew 43 percent, with 5,472 SUVs sold.

Cut #5 “It’s a good sales month for Expedition, our largest market for that SUV is actually Texas, and this is really important because  as everyone knows, we’ve got the all-new Expedition coming out for the 2018 model year this fall, so we’re really excited about that.” :19 sec.

Lincoln has had a string of 14 consecutive months of sales increases, according Merkle.

Cut#6 “When we look at March, our retail sales for the Lincoln brand were up 5 percent.  We had an 11 percent gain for cars a lot of that was driven by the all-new Continental and SUV’s were  up 2 percent at Lincoln, with really MKC leading the way.  MKC sales were up 17 percent in March.” :20 sec.