Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) saw a 17% sales decline in 19 of its core European markets during the month of June, selling 118,000 vehicles as demand lowered after several countries ended their scrapping incentive plans.
“The market is weakening as a result of the ending of scrappage schemes and the continuing frailty of the European economic recovery,” said Ford Europe Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Service Ingvar Sviggum.
“We expected this to happen this year, and have a robust plan to deal with the situation,” said Mr. Sviggum. “We said we would be competitive in the market but that we would pull back from some business—even at the cost of reduced share and volume—if that business was detrimental to our profitability.”
During the first six months of the yaer, Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F)’s Europe sales dropped by 3.9% to 716,900 units. Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F)’s market share declined by 0.5% to 8.7% for the first six months of the year.
Ford Chief Economist Ellen Hughes-Cromwick said during a conference call with the press that the company expects the European auto market to total between 14 million and 15 million vehicles this year, down from about 15.9 million in 2009.
