Countries which back in 2009 experienced their worst period are currently at the top of Ford's best selling markets. Spain for instance boosted its appetite for Ford vehicles by 32.2 percent, selling 57,500 units, while Turkey made Ford a market leader.
"In the first six months of 2010, Ford customers in Europe continued to be attracted by the appeal of our strongest-ever product range, and we will build upon this success in the rest of the year as we bring to market even more exciting new products and customer-focused technologies," Ingvar Sviggum, Ford vice president for Marketing, Sales and Service said in a statement.
In Ford's main 19 European countries, the numbers showed a decrease of 3.9 percent, to 716,900 vehicles. The reason behind the drop is the above mentioned shrinkage in demand, caused mainly by the elimination of the scrappage schemes in several European countries. Market share was 8.7 percent in the first half of 2010, down 0.5 percent compared with the same period in 2009.
"The market is weakening as a result of the ending of scrappage schemes and the continuing frailty of the European economic recovery. But we expected this to happen this year, and have a robust plan to deal with the situation,” Sviggum added.
“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.
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