Sales figures for the month of October are in, and while Chrysler and General Motors’ sales moved up in the month that was, Ford moved down by 1.7 percent year-over-year, largely due to the carmaker’s run-up to the 2015 Ford F-150 release.
All in all, Ford sold a total of 188,654 vehicles in October, with the Fusion enjoying a 5 percent yearly increase in sales and an all-time high number of units sold for October. The Lincoln brand also helped mitigate Ford’s losses in sales totals, as the release of the new MKC and Navigator drove a 24.6 percent year-over-year improvement. The U.S.-leading F-Series, however, lost 0.6 percent in sales, as Ford gets ready for the aluminum F-150’s release.
“Fusion is an outstanding success story with October marking six straight months of record sales,” read a prepared statement from Ford U.S. Marketing Vice President John Felice. “Fusion is on pace to break the 300,000-vehicle mark this year for the first time ever. Plus, based on the strong sales of the all-new MKC, Lincoln produced its best sales results in October since 2007.”
Over at General Motors, GM sold 222,819 vehicles last month, giving it its best October sales in seven years and an improvement of 0.2 percent year-over-year. According to GM’s own prepared statement, GM’s “class-leading crossovers,” including the Buick Encore, were among the main drivers in the company’s improvement last month; Encore sales improved 32.7 percent in October, while the Buick brand moved up by 6.5 percent overall.
Lastly, Chrysler had the biggest sales improvement among the Detroit Three, with a 21.7 percent increase over the previous October and the Jeep and Ram brands helping drive this significant improvement. Across all brands, Chrysler sold 170,480 cars and trucks in October 2014, its highest October figure since 2001, while Jeep and Ram improved by 51.7 percent and 35.9 percent respectively compared to their October 2013 sales.