Ford Boosting Its SUV Rebates
Ford Motor Co., apparently feeling the heat of General Motors Corp. taking the lead in sales of full-size sport-utility vehicles, will boost rebates on its largest SUVs next week.
Ford will add $500 to existing discounts, bringing the dealer incentive on both the full-size Expedition SUV and even larger Excursion to $2,000 starting Tuesday, Ford spokeswoman Karen Shaughnessy said.
The volume leader in trucks since the mid-1990s, Ford builds the country’s most popular SUV, the mid-size Explorer, and the most popular pickup truck, the F-Series. But it has seen its lead dwindle as a multitude of new trucks from GM and the Japanese come onto the market.
Gaining market share in high-margin trucks is crucial to auto makers because that is where they earn most of their profits. So far, the weakening economy and high gasoline prices have not put an overall dent in the truck market.
GM has no national incentive programs on its full-size SUVs, although dealers have their own regional discounts to sell trucks, GM spokesman Jeff Roegner said.
Ford’s heightened incentives are not an attempt to beat back GM’s gains in the SUV market, Shaughnessy said Friday. “Neither of these are volume vehicles,” she said. “If we were in a fight for a truck war, these vehicles wouldn’t do it.”
Nonetheless, GM deposed Ford as boasting the world’s No. 1 full-size SUV, selling 97,056 full-size Chevrolet Tahoe SUVs in the first six months of this year against 92,523 Ford Excursions, according to Autodata Corp., an industry tracking firm. That doesn’t include the Tahoe’s sister truck, the GMC Yukon, which sold 37,068 units.
Last month, Tahoe sales were up 33.5%, and GMC Yukon was up 44.6%. Meanwhile, sales of the Chevy Suburban and GMC Yukon XL, GM’s biggest SUVs and the equivalents of the Ford Excursion, surged 16.1% and 59.9%, respectively.
Meanwhile, “sales of the Ford Excursion [off 18.8%] and Expedition [off 24.5%] were dismal despite an aggressive dealer cash program,” industry analyst John Casesa of Merrill Lynch said in a research report Thursday.
Ford’s Excursion, the largest SUV on the market, was also far outsold by the Chevy Suburban and GMC Yukon XL.
Last month, Ford sent a memo to its dealers in the Atlanta region, noting that GM had taken the lead in light-truck sales but promising that Ford would regain its top position, even if it had to resort to costly incentives, the Detroit News reported Friday.
“The company will do what it takes to ensure that we maintain truck leadership this year,” the paper quoted the memo as saying. “We will be buying share and lots of customers in the third quarter. [Ford Chief Executive] Jac Nasser himself is getting daily sales updates from each region.”
Shaughnessy said she was unaware of any such missive. “It was probably a zone manager pumping up his own dealers, saying go get ‘em,” she said. “But are we serious about our truck leadership? Absolutely. We’ll take actions to stay competitive.”
Roegner declined to comment on whether GM had plans to roll out its own national rebates on trucks. “We’ll have our dealers keep doing what they’re doing,” he said.
He hinted however that GM is also committed to doing what it takes to retain truck market leadership: “How can it not be your goal to be No. 1?”
