Falcon sedan closes in on Commodore

[Blue_XR]

I read this on carsales.com.au

Falcon sedan closes in on Commodore
words - Josh Dowling
Four-door to four-door, the local large sedan sales race is close

The Falcon sedan came within 17 registrations of beating the Holden Commodore in May, but Ford isn't preparing for victory just yet.

The Commodore is still on track to become Australia's biggest selling car for the 14th year in a row, but figures supplied by Ford show the Falcon has closed the gap when comparing only sedan sales.

The Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries bundles sedan and wagon sales in the Falcon and Commodore tallies, and it is these figures that are typically quoted by the media and the industry. Using this measure, the Commodore has a comfortable sales lead over the Falcon in the first five months of this year (16,839 versus 11,080).

However Ford couldn't contain its excitement when the Falcon sedan got within 17 units of the Commodore sedan in May, and showed journalists a graph (and subsequently provided figures) showing how close the race was when comparing like with like.

The graph showed how the gap between the pair closed in February, widened in March (when Holden was offering big incentives) and then began to close again in April before the lines almost intersected in May.

"What this graph shows you is that when you take the wagon out of the equation we are very close to Commodore," said the boss of Ford Australia, Marin Burela.

Holden introduced its stylish Sportwagon mid-way through last year, whereas Ford is battling on with a revised version of the previous model.

Ford typically sells its Falcon wagon as a commercial vehicle and, for now at least, is relying on private buyers to shift into the Territory soft-roader, which at its introductory price of $38,888 drive-away, is effectively cheaper than the Falcon wagon.

When asked if Ford would build a wagon version of the new FG Falcon, Burela said there were other priorities.

"It has been designed, but we are yet to decide whether or not to build it. The current wagon is selling well for us as a tool of trade vehicle. We're going to see how the wagon version of the Mondeo is received later this year before we decide to do a wagon version of the current Falcon."

When asked why Ford had not been discounting the Falcon as heavily as Holden had been discounting the Commodore, Burela said: "We made a conscious decision not to go down the path of aggressive discounting. I chose not to follow the very erratic behaviour in March and December of some of our rivals.

"We are building cars to order, to protect our resale values. We have 31 to 32 days of stock in dealer's hands, this is almost an all-time low and a very good position to be in. It means we are not carving up [profits] for the sake of it. Some of our rivals have significantly greater supply in dealer stock."

The last time the Falcon overtook the Commodore was in September 2003, when the Ford won that month's tally by a narrow margin of just 48 sales.

But the then boss of Ford Australia, Geoff Polites, admitted it was a one-off: "We were all excited, no question. But ... we won't hold on to it," he told The Sydney Morning Herald at the time.

Interesting times ahead