Though FoMoCo is working to be disciplined with its inventory levels – and deliberately built up 2023 Ford F-150 inventory for competitive reasons – it has also been battling a bit of a backlog for months now. In fact, new Ford inventory levels closed out January at a 104 days’ supply, followed by 91 days’ in February and 97 days’ in March – all higher than the industry average by a significant margin, as well as among the highest in the overall automotive industry. Now, according to new data from Cox Automotive, new Ford inventory levels remained among the highest of that same group in April as well.
At the conclusion of April, new Ford inventory levels stood at a 100 days’ supply, which is the highest since January and once again far above the industry average, which was 76 days’. Only a handful of brands finished April with higher inventory levels than The Blue Oval, a list that includes Jeep, Ram, Jaguar, and Alfa Romeo – each of which had a days’ supply of inventory that was at least double the industry average – as well as Dodge, Lincoln, Chrysler, Infiniti, Volvo, Mitsubishi, Genesis, Nissan, Mini, and Mazda.
As for the automotive industry as a whole, its days’ supply increased by two month-over-month, resulting in 2.84 million vehicles sitting on dealer lots – which is 51 percent higher than a year ago. Interestingly, this increase was largely driven by a small handful of brands, as others – including Toyota, Lexus, Honda, and Porsche – continued to post significantly low inventory levels, with the latter dropping 10 days’ from its result a month ago.
With sales proving strong in April, the average transaction price across the entire industry finished the month at $47,433, which is $94 less than one year ago. In terms of inventory by price level, affordable vehicles are still proving much harder to find than pricier ones, as the highest-priced inventory – $50,000 or more – increased to an average of 90 days’ supply – 5.5 percent more than March.
We’ll have more on the state of Ford inventory levels soon, so be sure and subscribe to Ford Authority for comprehensive Ford news coverage.
Comments
This is caused by Ford’s endless recall program; they have had 25 recalls in the first 19 weeks of 2024. Meanwhile, Failure Farley continues to be overcompensated.
Today, I was at a Ford Dealership ,and i had bought a 2016 Ford Flex-SEL in Dec. 2016 . My rt. rear brake light and turn signal was giving me trouble ; sometimes working and sometimes not blinking . The dealership at a cost of $ 24.00 replaced the installed WRONG bulb that was installed at the Factory ! Really , in Canada at the Oakville, Canada Plant in 2016 ! Wow !
This wasn’t for “competetive reasons” as you quote. It was to continue running now over priced factories vs. shutdown and uaw fun contract. Where did the build to volume we can move go? Out the window. Buy union votes for 5 more months, then imploded. Whatever. Poor management, poor governess, poor planning, and the only people that are going to get hurt are the people putting g them together and designing them. Lord forbid they actually fire a v.p. and not replace with 4 more. Why does Ford have 4x the executive staff than g.m. that builds 2x? Think about that.