(July 18, 2011) COLOGNE, Germany — Strong demand for the all-new Ford Focus, Ford C-MAX and the Ford Transit helped Ford increase sales by 6.6 per cent in June to 151,700 units across the 51 European region markets.

In the traditional 19 Western European markets, Ford sales in June increased by 0.1 per cent, despite a 7.4 per cent decline in overall industry sales. As a result, Ford’s market share in June increased by 0.6 percentage points to 8.5 per cent.

For the first half of 2011, Ford sold 836,000 units in the 51 European markets, up 1.7 per cent or 14,100 units compared to first half of 2010. In the traditional 19 markets, Ford sold 689,800 new Ford vehicles in the first half of 2011, a reduction of 3.8 per cent from the same period last year.

In both June and in the first six months of 2011, Ford was Europe’s No.2 best-selling car brand.

“We had a strong June and we continue to gain momentum,” said Roelant de Waard, vice president, Marketing, Sales and Service, Ford of Europe. “We gained sales and market share largely on the strength of our new product, particularly the new Focus and C-MAX.”

The recently-launched Ford Focus continues to gain sales momentum. Sales in June reached 25,100 units — up from 12,000 in April and 18,000 in May — the best June for the Focus since 2008. Since going on sale in mid-March, the Ford Focus has sold 68,600 units.

Sales of the all-new Ford C-MAX have reached 78,500 since it was launched late last year, including 10,200 in June, the best June for C-MAX since 2008. In Germany, C-MAX sales were up 134 per cent in the first six months of the year compared to the same period last year.

Registrations of the Ford Galaxy and Ford S-MAX models in the traditional 19 European markets jumped 21.1 per cent and 12.5 per cent in the first half of 2011, respectively.