Ford Motor Company’s June U.S. sales totaled 227,979 vehicles – down 5.1 percent compared to last year. Here to explain is Ford Sales Analyst, Erich Merkle.

Cut #1  “So the sales decline in June was all really attributed to fleet, which is due to just the timing of the orders.  While fleet was down 13.9 percent, our retail sales through dealerships to customers were the same as they were a year ago.  So, we expect the industry was off just a little bit at retail and we maintained a very steady pace  year-over-year basis.”   :24 sec.

Despite the 5 percent decline, Ford’s June average transaction price grew significantly, which Merkle attributes to the high-end truck sales, namely coming from Super-Duty.

Cut #2  ”King Ranch, Lariat, Platinum, really high demand for high series super duties, with a lot of our class exclusive features that customers are demanding.  So that drove our transaction prices, in addition to that you’ve got the Raptor out there now for F-150, which is also added to that mix.”  :21 sec.

Another significant sales increase happened for the Ford Explorer where sales were up about 23 percent in June versus a year ago.

Cut #3  “So this marks Explorer’s best June performance in 12 years with sales up 18 percent in the nation’s largest SUV market: the Northeast.  Now what Explorer does, it also caps off a record first-half for Ford brand SUVs.  Ford brand SUVs in the first half were up 3 percent with 406,464 SUVs sold.  That’s the first time that we’ve sold over the 400 thousand mark Ford brand SUVs at any time in Ford’s history.”  :32 sec.

Lincoln retail sales increased about 11 percent for the month of June, which Merkle attributes to new product driving a steady increase in sales at the luxury car market level.

Cut #4  “For the first half Lincoln retail sales were up about 9 percent, that was our best first-half performance in a decade.  And what’s really doing it for Lincoln is that we have this nice string going now where we’ve finished 17 consecutive months of increasing retail sales.   A lot of that’s being driven by very successful SUVs with MKC, and MKX and then we can’t forget but the all-new Continental is also in that mix right now.  So a lot of new product driving Lincoln’s success.”  :30 sec.