(June 16, 2011) COLOGNE, Germany — Ford increased sales across its total 51 European markets in May by 13 per cent to 143,800 units, up by 16,600 units from May 2010.

The increase was fueled by strong sales of the all-new Ford Focus and C-MAX, the recently refreshened S-MAX and Galaxy and popular vehicles including the Kuga. 

May sales in Ford's traditional 19 European markets rose by 10.5 percentage points to 116,500, up by 11,100. By comparison, the total industry increase in these countries only saw an 8.8 per cent improvement. Ford’s market share for the month increased by 0.1 percentage points compared with a year ago to 8.3 per cent. Both in May and in the first five months of 2011, Ford was Europe’s No. 2 best-selling car brand.

“This has been a very solid May for Ford sales in Europe, and I'm particularly delighted by the strong response to our technologies on our latest vehicles," said Roelant de Waard, vice president, Marketing, Sales and Service.

“We're also seeing a shift towards lower emissions vehicles. Around 35 per cent of Ford's total vehicle sales are for vehicles emitting less than 120 g/km CO2, and there's been a close to a six-fold increase today in sales of Ford vehicles emitting less than 110 g/km CO2 compared to the start of 2010,” said de Waard.

More than 100,000 customers have now purchased or ordered the new C-MAX. Year-to-date May, sales volume of the C-MAX have doubled over a year ago, giving the C-MAX its fastest sales start to the year since 2006.

To meet demand for the five-seat Ford C-MAX and seven-seat Ford Grand C-MAX, Ford recently increased the daily production rate by almost 18 per cent at its plant in Valencia, Spain, where the models are built. In Germany, C-MAX sales were up 147 per cent this year through to May compared with the same period year.

The Ford Focus also is performing strongly, with 18,800 Focus units sold in May and nearly 45,000 units in total since the popular five-door model first went on sale in mid-March. The wagon and four-door derivatives are now being launched across Europe.

Ford’s Kuga sales of 6,400 marked the company’s best performance ever for the vehicle since launch in February 2008, while sales of the Galaxy and S-MAX models in the Euro 19 region jumped 35 per cent and 23 per cent, respectively.

In its traditional 19 European markets, 570,400 new Ford vehicles were registered in the first five months of 2011, a reduction of 27,600 or 4.6 per cent from the same period last year.

Year-to-date market share in Ford's traditional 19 European markets was 8.3 per cent, down 0.5 percentage points compared to 2010. The lower sales and market share reflect the favorable impact of scrappage schemes still in place in the early part of 2010, which helped to boost Ford's small car sales in the first part of 2010, as well as Ford’s decision to selectively reduce participation in low margin business.

Across its total 51 markets across Europe, Ford sold 684,000 vehicles in the first five months of 2011, up 4,300 or 0.6 percent compared to the same period 2010.