The automotive market has been returning to normal in the US and now Europe is showing signs of a solid recovery. Ford in Europe experienced a 10% sales growth this January, which has been driven by strong demand for its Commercial Vehicles, SUV’s and Performance Vehicles. Ford is planning to launch 7 new or refreshed vehicles for 2016 in Europe, including a new Kuga, Edge, a Focus RS performance hatch, new powertrain and technologies for the Transit and Transit Custom, and an update to the popular Ranger pick-up.
 
Ford’s total vehicle sales and market share in Europe has started with some good signs so far in 2016 with the best January for Ford overall since 2012. It increased its market share to nearly 8% across all its European markets compared to the average auto industry growth of around 3%.
 

	Commercial Vehicles: This is up by 7% with the best January sales since 2008. The new expanded commercial range, the Transit Connect and Transit 2-tonne along with the Ranger pickup provided strong sales, with an increase for Transit of 28% and the Ranger at 16%. Ford’s share of the total commercial vehicle market was 12.7%.
	SUVs: Ford’s SUV sales tracked well in January, with the EcoSport up 50% and the Kuga up 19%. Demand was strong for its SUV’s and with the launch of the new larger Edge SUV in the first half of 2016. Ford expects sales to grow by about 30% during 2016 compared with 2015 and are predicting to sell more than 200,000 units for the very first time in Europe.
	Performance Vehicles: The combined sales of Ford’s current performance line-up which includes the Fiesta ST, Focus ST, Focus ST diesel, and the Mustang almost tripled, compared to January 2015. We have talked about the launch of the new Focus RS in our previous articles and Ford expects record sales for the return of this iconic performance vehicle this year as well. In Europe some 40,000 Ford performance cars are likely to be sold in 2016 and that would be a 50% improvement on 2015 which itself saw performance vehicle sales rise by over 60%.

 
Ford Europe is saying that their growth is mostly coming from retail and fleet and not from the rental market like some of its competition. Retail and fleet sales accounted for 81% of Ford’s vehicle sales in January, that’s 3 percentage points better than in the same month last year and a lot better than the industry average. Ford globally holds 5th position for the most valuable auto brand and their largest market still remains in the USA.
 
March 2016