Ford Falcon sales near all-time low

Less than 1000 Falcons were delivered in July as the company battled the continuing sales slide for its one-time hero car and the fallout from 440 sackings at its factory at Broadmeadows in Melbourne.

The official total is likely to be around 945 cars, only slightly better than the dismal 931 in January, although confirmation will not come until Friday with the monthly new-car sales results from VFacts.

“It’s challenging,” is the only comment from Neil McDonald of Ford Australia. Falcon now only rates fourth among Ford’s nameplates in Australia and was outsold by the Ranger ute, Focus and Fiesta in July.

The showroom scorecard will show the Toyota HiLux continued its run as Australia’s favourite in July with just over 4150 sales, well ahead of the second-placed Mazda3 at 3355 and the Toyota Corolla at 2980.

Once again, the Holden Commodore is back in the pack – after losing its long-term number one position at the end of 2011 and suffering a mauling from the Mazda3 and HiLux this year – with 2360 sales.

It is expected to trail the locally-made Cruze compact again when official figures are released, but could also fall behind Holden’s new workhorse, the Colorado ute, which is tipped for close to 2700 sales.

The Colorado success came as utes continue to out-perform the overall market growth this year, with Nissan also delivering more than 2100 of its Navara pickups and the Ranger doing around 1700 for Ford.

Toyota dominated through July with around 17,000 sales, compared with Holden at just on 8900, then Mazda and Hyundai.