Ford auto sales in US continue recovery on pickup demand

Ford Motor on Friday continued to show indications of a recovery from the coronavirus crisis as demand for sports utility vehicles and pickup trucks helped increase third-quarter sales in the United States.

The U.S. auto sector has jumped back quicker than other industries, but automakers had a hand in that with aggressive incentives such as zero-for-84 months financing, payment deferrals, and job assurance programs.

Ford posted a 5% decline in U.S. auto sales for the third quarter but said a continuing recovery from the coronavirus-induced lockdowns helped it record better sales compared with the second quarter.

The No.2 U.S. automaker, which reveals its quarterly sales volumes a day later than the rest of the industry, said it sold 551,796 vehicles in the US during the quarter, down from 580,251 a year ago.

Its sales were, however, increased by 27.2% when compared with the preceding quarter.

“The seasonally adjusted sales pace for September demonstrated yet another sequential improvement for the industry, and a return to near pre-virus levels … a print 16.4mn is not far off the 17mn level we saw from 2015-19,” Credit Suisse analyst Dan Levy said.

“It remains to be seen if this level of sales can be sustained near-term.”

Bigger competitor General Motors reported a 10% drop in sales on Thursday and said the auto sales have been even more strong and made enough recovery in the third quarter.

While overall industry sales in the quarter dropped, the trend was positive as demand boost each month, especially among retail costumers for high-profit SUVs and pickup trucks.

Sales for its F-Series pickup-truck increased 3.5% in the quarter when compared with a year earlier, marking its best pickup sales since 2005, the automaker.