(February 18, 2014) COLOGNE, Germany — Sales of Ford vehicles surged by 9.2 percent in January compared with the same month last year, and was almost double the industry growth of 4.7 percent in the key 20 European markets Ford tracks.

January marked the eighth consecutive month of sales growth for the company. All key market shares — total, retail and commercial vehicle market shares — rose in January.

Ford’s share of the total vehicle market was 7.5 percent, up 0.3 percentage points. Ford share of the retail market — sales to private customers — was 7.8 percent, up 0.4 percentage points and was the 12th straight month of retail share growth. Ford commercial vehicle market share was 10.4 percent, up 0.9 percentage points – the highest level since 1998.

“Our sales and share growth — particularly in the higher value retail segment of the market — speak to the strength of our new vehicles and products,” said Roelant de Waard, vice president, Marketing, Sales and Service, Ford of Europe. “We’ve launched 11 new vehicles over the past 15 months, and we’ll launch more than 10 additional new vehicles in 2014 alone.”

Compared with January 2013, Ford sales to European retail and fleet customers increased 4 percentage points to 78 percent of total sales – 6 percentage points above industry average. Ford sales to rentals and dealer registrations declined to 22 percent from 28 percent in 2013.

Ford sold 80,800 vehicles in the Euro 20 region and 90,700 across all of its 50 European markets in January.

Ford extended its market leadership in the UK — its largest European market — with a total vehicle sales increase of 11 percent, and a share gain of 0.6 percentage points to 15.3 percent. In Germany, Ford sales increased by 38 percent, driving the company’s total market share up 1.6 percentage points, to 7.4 percent.

Ford will launch more than 10 new vehicles in 2014, including the Tourneo Courier, Transit Courier, Transit, Mondeo family, Mondeo Hybrid, and the C-MAX Energi plug-in-hybrid.