Looking Way Up: Ford posts 33% sales gain in 2009, 15% market share

While automotive sales have been almost universally down in 2009 compared to 2008,Ford has a legitimate reason to crow about its December figures, which are up a third over December of ’08 and an impressive 50 percent over November.

Ford boasts that its market share is up to 15 percent – one full percentage point higher than in 2008 and the first time since 1995 that the Blue Oval has gained on its competitors. Ford, Lincoln and even Mercury sales were improved in December. Here are a few of the highlights:

Subaru, Kia and Hyundai increase alone, FoMoCo loses least

We at Waldorf Ford regonize what a terrible year 2009 was for the auto industry as a whole. The slumping economy did nothing to bolster consumer confidence to say the least. We at your Ford Dealer in Southern Maryland noticed that all year long. With all that being said we were happy to see some good news in what could easily be considered a bad news report. Call us the eternal optimists be we see it as a glass half full senerio for us.

Most automakers giving themselves a pat on the back for a strong sales performance in December should take a second look at the books. A good month of sales to finish off a crappy year still equals a crappy year of sales. The chart below makes this perfectly evident, as only three individual brands and no multi-brand automakers managed to make it through 2009 selling more vehicles than they did in 2008. Not surprisingly,Subaru, Kia and Hyundai (in that order) were the three brands to post an overall sales increase in 2009, with Subaru posting a double-digit rise of 15 percent. With 216,652 sales overall, Subaru now sells more vehicles in the U.S. thanVolkswagen and Mazda, two direct competitors with larger lineups.

Though no multi-brand automaker can claim a sales victory in 2009, you might be surprised to learn that Ford Motor Company with its Ford, Lincoln, Mercury and Volvo brands performed the best. FoMoCo sales in 2009 fell 15 percent, a smaller drop than any of its competitors. Toyota Motor Company sales (Toyota and Lexus combined) fell over 20 percent, but the Japanese juggernaut still managed to beat Ford in number of vehicles sold (1.77 million to 1.68 million).

The rest of the industry’s performance can be viewed in the chart below. Note that there were 308 selling days in both 2008 and 2009, so the percent change in volume sold will equal the percent change in the daily average sales rate.

It’s official: The Ford Mustang outsold the Chevrolet Camaro in 2009, despite a string of month-on-month sales leads over the Blue Oval’s pony car. But it was a close race.

According to sales data released by both Ford and General Motors, the Mustang sold 66,623 units in 2009, with GM coming in close behind with 61,618 Camaros sold for the year.

Early on, there was speculation that the Camaro could overtake the Mustang if its sales streak continued, but despite pent up demand for the bowtie brand’s retromobile, Ford sold 6,327 Mustangs last month — over 60 percent more than it did in November. Not a huge surprise, but a good showing nonetheless, and with all the updates to the 2011 Mustang, we suspect that next year’s race won’t be nearly as entertaining.
Filed under: Coupe, Chevrolet, Ford, By the Numbers

Ford Mustang takes the 2009 Pony Car sales crown from the Chevrolet Camaro

I was looking for some things to blog about this morning and came across this video that was kind of interesting.  Note that some of the items they talk about – adjustable brake pedals, memory steering wheels are things that we have available today…pretty cool how far in advance these things were first part of concept vehicles.  If you want to compare these to the 2010 vehicles Ford has in the lineup, go to Waldorf Ford.
http://www.youtube.com/v/NPM1nJYB6cw&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6&border=1

Ford’s recent navigation of financial shoals is paying off big-time. The Detroit automaker took a different tack than its rivals, which sought aid from the federal government and shelter in bankruptcy court.

Sure, you could take the lift up with the rest of the gapers and ride the designated, groomed slopes back down to the ski lodge, but then you would be lame. Rally car racer and DC Shoes co-founder Ken Block prefers something a bit less conventional, like his Subaru-based TRAX STI, the world’s fastest cat track operation automobile.

Based on a race-ready Sube WRX STI, the car was tweaked by Vermont SportsCar to pack 400 horsepower, competition dampers, a turbocharged, intercooled STI engine and, of course, cat tracks where the tires used to be. Although not shown in the video below, the backcountry badass also can pull a custom fiberglass four-person sleigh that can hold four snow boarders and their gear.

The goal? Delivering boarders to backcountry locales traditional ski lifts–much less traditional automobiles–could never reach. That’s not to mention the fun you can have simply racing around in the snow with rally car speed and handling. But don’t take our word for it, check out Block’s test run in the video below. “0-60” magazine also has more pics and an interview with Block about his high-powered, high-country toy.

Source [AutoBlog]

Best Worst Exotic Car Crashes for 2009

DEARBORN, Mich., Dec. 28, 2009 – Forty years after its namesake became a road racing legend, the BOSS is back on track for 2010 with a new 5.0-liter V-8 engine.

In honor of the 40th anniversary of Parnelli Jones’ 1970 Trans-Am championship in a Mustang BOSS 302 prepared by Bud Moore Engineering, Ford Racing is introducing the BOSS 302R, a factory-built race car ready for track days and road racing in a number of Grand-Am, SCCA and NASA classes.

“To keep pace with consumer demand, the Ford team has built modern versions of the most iconic performance Mustangs over the years,” said Jamie Allison, director, Ford North America Motorsports. “From Shelbys to Bullitt, Mach and Cobra Jet, it is now time for BOSS to join the list of America’s most coveted Mustangs. The original BOSS 302 was a championship-winning legend and the new Mustang BOSS 302R will carry on the tradition. The Mustang was born to race from the start, and this new Mustang is bred to win.”

The Mustang BOSS 302R is a serialized off-road-only vehicle ready to race. Each base model will come with a 5.0-liter four-valve engine and a six-speed manual transmission with a roll cage, race seats, safety harness, data acquisition and race dampers/springs, and a Brembo brake and tire package, starting at an MSRP of $79,000.

And, with a special Grand-Am Homologation Package (M-FR500-BOSS R1), it will also be ready to compete in the Grand-Am Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge series (formerly known as KONI Challenge), starting with the season-opening race in Daytona on Jan. 29, 2010. As of today, five BOSS 302R race cars will be delivered to customers ready to race in Daytona. MSRP of the BOSS 302R1 is $129,000.

The Grand-Am Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge-ready Mustang BOSS 302R will feature a sealed high-output race engine with an upgraded cooling system, a close-ratio six-speed transmission with integral shifter, a seam-welded body, race suspension/KONI dampers and ABS brake tuning, race performance exhaust and a high-speed balance one-piece driveshaft.

The BOSS 302R follows in the very successful footsteps of its most recent road racing predecessor – the Mustang FR500C from Ford Racing. In 2005, when the Mustang FR500C debuted at Daytona, the first car was delivered on Wednesday of that week and won the KONI Challenge race on Friday.

In five years of competition since then, the Mustang FR500C has won three Triple Crown championships of driver, team and manufacturer’s titles in KONI competition including back-to-back (2008 and 2009). The FR500C has also seen success in FIA GT4 competition winning the 2007 and 2008 driver’s championships.

“We expect the BOSS 302R to continue the successful tradition of winning with factory-built production-based race cars from Ford Racing,” said Allison. “The FR500C and FR500S road racing Mustangs, and the Mustang FR500CJ (Cobra Jet) for drag racing have proven to be great cars for our customers, helping teams win races and championships. We believe that the BOSS 302R will provide that same sort of competitive product for our customers with the tradition you can only get from Ford Racing.”

Each Ford Racing factory-built production-based turnkey race car has won its competition debut.

“Racing has long served as a technical proving grounds for production engines,” said Allison. “What’s good enough for the streets is now good enough for the racetrack. The 5.0-liter block and architecture in the Mustang BOSS 302R is the same as the 2011 Mustang GT.”

“We have a great team on the BOSS 302R project,” said Andy Slankard, Ford Racing engineering supervisor and the lead engineer on the BOSS 302R project. “Between our partners at AutoAlliance International, where the Mustang is built, Team Mustang, Multimatic and the entire Ford Racing team, we have once again proven to be a leader in turnkey production-based race cars.”

Available through Ford dealers like Waldorf Ford, a total of 50 BOSS 302R Mustangs will be built by Ford Racing. Delivery is anticipated in the third quarter of 2010.

For more information on Ford Racing Performance Parts, please visit http://www.fordracingparts.com.

[Source: Automotive.com ]

Distracted driving in the nation as well as the Waldorf Ford area is becoming a very real concern in the age of texting, cell phones, touch screen navigation and fast food. So what is a government to do to stop the madness? New laws? More police enforcement? Maybe at some point, but for now the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has created a new website called distraction.gov. The site provides facts and figures that shows how distracted driving affects your ability to drive safely while also working as a news feed for new distracted driving legislation.

You may have heard that driving while texting makes you 23 times more likely to get into an accident, but the NHTSA site gives more alarming stats. For example, the site claims that driving while talking on the phone makes you as much of a hazard as someone driving while over the legal drinking limit. The site also claims that 6,000 people died in distracted driving accidents in 2008 and that drivers using hand held devices in the car are four times as likely to seriously injure themselves in an accident. Even more disturbing is the fact that the NHTSA found distracted driving fatalities went from 8% in 2004 to 11% in 2008.

Head over to distraction.gov for more interesting info, but try not to pull up the site on your mobile while you’re on the road. And try not to get distracted by Ray LaHood’s eyebrows when you click.

[Source: Distraction.gov | AutoBlog | Photo: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images]

Whoo Hoo! We at Waldorf Ford are super stoked about this new application. We can’t tell you the number of times we have been behind drivers who can’t seem to master the art of turn signal etiquette..

It’s fitting that Ford‘s first European offering to swim over this way will bring with it another feature that The Continent can take credit for: tap-for-three-blinks turn signal operation. It will appear on the Fiesta this summer, and then migrate to other vehicles in the 2011 line-up, starting with the Super Duty series. 

The three-blink feature is not as polarizing as the placement of paddle shifters, but people are known to have their opinions. We like it, preferring a mistaken tap to someone flashing their turn signal eternally. You can read Ford’s release below.

[Source: Ford]