Boldly Breaking! Ford Makes A Bold August Sales Movement, Down 12%

Looks like FoMoCo's dropped the whole "keepin' it real" graphic and headline thing they had going for them last month, and it's good to see them returning to the obfuscation of months past. We mean, with a headline like:

"HIGHEST SALES EVER FOR FORD'S NEW MID-SIZE SEDANS; NEARLY 23,000 FUSIONS, MILANS AND ZEPHYRS DELIVERED IN AUGUST"

What could possibly go wrong? Oh wait — there it is — the second bullet point:

"Overall, Ford's August sales up 6 percent compared with July 2006, but down 12 percent compared with August 2005 when Ford offered employee prices to all customers."

Those little rascals — trying to hide the numbers under the big bold moves they're showing off in the headline — don't they know most journalists don't read past the first line? Luckily, we're not normally considered "journalists" and we even read some of the paragraphs too. That's how we learned that sales declined from 288,429 units last year to 255,112 this August. So which models and brands are getting hit the hardest? Well...

...how about Jaguar (down 35% for August), the Ford Five Hundred {down 51.4% for August), the divorced from sales Fresstyle (down 42%), Ranger pickup trucks (down 43.5% for August) and...hell...all pickup trucks (down 20.4% for August).

But there are some positives — Mustang sales (up 64.2% for August), the GT (up 26.5% for August — the last August it'll be available) and the Fusion, Milan and Zephyr really are selling quite well — pushing car sales up 8.5% for all brands.

Related:
Breaking! FoMoCo Makes Bold Move, Says Fuck You To Straight Talk And Switches Sales Graphic; Breaking! Mixed-Message Day At Ford — Sales Are Up And Down [internal]