Mercury

October 2, 2008

Hybrids Outpace Dismal September Market By Scant Margin

By John O'Dell, Senior Editor

It's been pretty well established that there wasn't much of an auto market in the U.S. last month.

"Catastrophe" and "disaster" are applicable adjectives; "It sucked" is how some wags have described it.

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Sales of new GM hybrid SUVs like this Chevrolet Tahoe helped hybrid market.
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We've had Edmunds' crack number crunchers parsing the data for us, looking for any glimmer of hope that might be found in the "green" and fuel-efficiency parts of the market and, so, far, have to say that they haven't come up with much.

The first pass through Wednesday's raw sales data provides at look at how hybrids did in comparison to the market as a whole.

And depending on how you do the comparison - to the previous month or to the same month a year ago - we found a mixed message for September hybrid sales.

Hybrid Segment Outpaces Market

The market as a whole was down 26.5 percent from September 2007 and was off 22.5 percent from August '08. It was the first month since the late 1990s that sales dropped below the 1-million mark.

Posted by: Permalink | Comments (0); John O'Dell October 2, 2008, 4:41 PM
Categories:: Cadillac, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Ford, General Motors, Green Vehicles, Honda, Hybrid, Mercury, Nissan, Toyota

July 23, 2008

Report: Ford To Say Adios to Truck Era, Use Mercury as Small Car Sales Channel

Right, the European Ford Focus Coupé-Cabriolet.

Ford Motor Co. reportedly is planning to turn its Michigan Truck Assembly Plant, one of the most profitable in the world at the height of the pickup truck boom in the late 1990s, into a small-car factory.

If the report in today's Wall Street Journal is accurate, the move would send a clear signal to those who still need one that the era of the big truck has come to the end of the road in a stagnant U.S. economy plagued by high fuel prices andgrowing concern over future oil supplies.

The newspaper report, which Ford declined to comment on, says the automaker will announce plans Thursday to switch the Detroit area plant and two other truck assembly plants over to production of U.S. versions of Ford's more fuel-efficient (and generally better-looking) European small car models.

The report also says that Ford intends to begin using its ailing Mercury brand as the principal channel for those cars - an echo of the late 1980s when Lincoln-Mercury dealers tried - rather unsuccessfully as it turned out - to sell a pair of German-build European Fords under the "Merkur" brand name.

A report we posted earlier this week speculated on Ford's plans to switch from trucks to small cars but didn't mention specific plants or the idea of using Mercury as its new small-car sales outlet.

John O'Dell,Senior Editor

Posted by: Permalink | Comments (1); John O'Dell July 23, 2008, 8:14 AM
Categories:: Emissions, Ford, Fuel Economy, Mercury