Ford Maintains Its Sales Momentum As October Sales Remain Strong

October was a good month for Ford as the vehicle manufacturer maintained its electric vehicle momentum. According to sales figures just released, Ford's electric vehicle (EV) sales were up 120 percent over last year. This is two times the growth rate of the overall EV segment, in general.

' Ford Continues to See Strong Demand

"Ford continues to see strong demand for its vehicles, with orders for' 23MY vehicles up 134 percent over last year. The all-new Super Duty saw a record 52,000 orders in just five days. The F-Series continued as America's No. 1 truck, expanding its lead over our second-place competitor to more than 100,000 trucks this year. We doubled our electric vehicle sales. F-150 Lightning had its best monthly sales performance since launch," said Andrew Frick, vice president, Sales, Distribution & Trucks, Ford.

Ford's F-150 Lightning remains the country's best-selling electric pickup, with sales of 2,436 pickups. Lightning had the best monthly sales performance since its introduction last year.

The E-Transit remains the country's best-selling electric van as sales climbed 71.5 percent compared to September on sales of 770 E-Transits.

The automaker's first all-electric crossover, the Mustang Mach-E, saw its sales up 7.3 percent over last year on sales of 3,055 vehicles.

Demand Stands At Record Levels

Meanwhile, demand stands at record levels for the model year 2023 vehicles. According to the automaker, retail orders for 2023 vehicles were up 134 percent over the model year 2022 at this time last year. Orders for 2023 vehicles totaled 255,000.

About 50 percent of retail sales for the seventh straight month came from previously placed orders. Year to date, the retail share is up 1.2 percentage points.

F-Series Super Duty pickup order banks open for the 2023 models on Oct. 27, with over 52,000 total new orders placed in five days – averaging 10,000 orders per day.

Bronco SUV sales continued to expand. They are up 48.4 percent in October on sales of 10,928 vehicles. Ninety-one percent of Bronco's retail sales are coming from previously placed orders.

F-Series Expands Its Lead

Meantime, the F-Series continued to expand its lead through October as America's best-selling pickup on sales of 523,712 vehicles. This extends the F-Series' lead over its second-place competitor to 105,427 trucks this year.

Ford's hot-selling compact pickup, the Maverick, had a dealer lot turn rate of just six days last month, with sales up 123 percent. Maverick's conquest rate is over 60 percent, with its top competitive conquests coming from:

• Honda Civic
• Honda CR-V
• Toyota's RAV 4

Blue Cruise Gains Miles

Ford's BlueCruise and Lincoln ActiveGlide technology has more than 97,000 customers enrolled. It has accumulated more than 28 million hands-free miles with a network of over 130,000 Blue Zone miles across North America.

Ford Motor Photo

Marc Stern has been an automotive writer since 1971 when an otherwise normal news editor said, "You're our new car editor," and dumped about 27 pounds of auto stuff on my desk. I was in heaven as I have been a gearhead from my early days. As a teen, I spent many misspent hours hanging out at gas stations like Shell and Texaco (a big thing in my youth) and working on cars. From there on, it was a straight line to my first column for the paper "You Auto Know," an enterprise I handled faithfully for 32 years. Not many people know that I also handled computer documentation while writing YAN for a good part of my life. My best writing, though, was always in cars. My work has appeared in Popular Mechanics, Mechanix Illustrated, AutoWeek, SuperStock, Trailer Life, Old Cars Weekly, Special Interest Autos, etc. You can follow me on: Twitter or Facebook.