NEWS

FORD was once again the clear winner in October’s new car registration figures with the Fiesta taking top honours. 6,024 Fiestas were registered last month, with 91,965 units sold in the year-to-date. However, October’s poor sales figures are evident with the Fiesta. In September, more than 19,000 Fiestas were registered – almost 13,000 more compared [...]

FORD’S whole model range is the new right arm of the law, it has been announced this week. The entire Ford range from the Ford Fiesta to the Ford Transit has been awarded ‘preferred status’ by the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) and the National Association of Police Fleet Managers (NAPFM), in a move to [...]

Ford dealership Stoneacre York has driven a Ford Transit ECOnetic around Britain for one very special sortie. The Ford dealer drove the Transit on a 650-mile journey for Help the Heroes and the RAF Benevolent Fund to 12 locations associated with the World War II battle – on one tank of fuel. The crew and their [...]

BUSINESS in the last quarter of 2010 will be ‘intensely competitive’ predicts Ford’s UK boss. Speaking exclusively to Car Dealer, Nigel Sharp believes that on a scale of one to 10, the remaining months of 2010 will score 10 out of 10 in terms of how hard business will be. From the UK’s biggest selling brand [...]

FORD was the clear winner in the 60-plate new car registration stakes with the Fiesta leading the pack. Over 19,000 Fiestas were registered last month – almost 5000 more units than the next-best Vauxhall Corsa. Vauxhall also took third place though, with the new Astra coming ahead of the Ford Focus. This reinforces the Vauxhall [...]

FORD is to launch the new Focus range with a big push through Facebook, it has been announced here in Paris. CEO Stephen Odell said the firm would, in the next few days, launch the ‘Global Drive’ initiative to preview next year’s new family hatch range. This will be based on a bespoke Ford Focus [...]

VERTU has today exchanged contracts to acquire two Cheshire car dealers from Lookers plc. The dual franchise dealers are Macclesfield Renault and Ford, and Altrincham Renault and Nissan. Altrincham is actually the first time Vertu has run a Nissan car dealer. It also takes Vertu’s Renault representation up to 5, and Ford up to 20. [...]

FORD president Alan Mulally has described the company’s turnaround to top UK business leaders. He spoke at the at the CBI Annual Lecture, where he explained just how the blue oval was the only big US car maker not to go bankrupt during the recession. That was despite Ford losing cash when Mulally joined in 2006, [...]

FORD is hoping to find homes for 3,500 new C-MAX models by the end of 2010 – and 20,000 in 2011! Marketing director Mark Simpson told Car Dealer the new model is extremely popular with customers and the marque’s dealers alike. Demonstrators will be arriving in dealers next month, he said, and the real marketing [...]

YOU’RE a high-flying Ford design director, created the Kinetic look, penned great cars like the latest Fiesta and Mondeo. You are responsible for the look of all cars that hit European and Asian roads. But now you’ve got to buy a car of your own – what on earth do you spend your money on? [...]

FORD’S new C-MAX and Grand C-MAX go on sale next month – and the maker says it has slashed running costs. The new cars have lower insurance groups, better residuals as well as improved fuel emissions and economy over the outgoing model – and Ford says this equates to an £800 annual saving. The Grand [...]

FORD will launch the full range of new Focus at the Paris Motor Show – and showcase the new hot ST. Showroom-ready versions of the 5-door hatch, 4-door saloon and 5-door estate will be seen at the motor show later in the month… … but all eyes will be on a preview version of the [...]

FORD is preparing to take 2000 UK dealers on an intensive training course for key new models. A two-week epic will run at the firm’s UK training centre in Loughborough. Starting in early November, this will give dealer staff full information on both the brand new C-MAX and Grand C-MAX range, plus the facelifted 2011 [...]

FORD once again topped the sales charts for August, with the Fiesta taking its familiar number 1 position. This is despite August being the least popular month of the year to buy a new car in. SMMT stats show August usually only accounts for around 3 percent of UK new car sales, so the 55k [...]

FORD Granada driver Derek Miller has won a £10k makeover for the car he’s owned for over 2 decades. All Ford dealers ran the competition that was tied in with a free Visual Health Check earlier in the year. The ‘Spring into Summer’ offered all entrants the opportunity to won a makeover for their motor [...]

CITROEN has revealed the production ready look of its new DS4 which it hopes will take on Audi’s A3 Sportback. The 5-door ‘crossover coupe’ family hatch is the latest variant in the ‘posh Citroen’ DS range. It will be shown in public for the first time at this month’s Paris Motor Show, prior to arriving [...]

FORD has REGAINED its number one in the UK car sales chart, new figures from the SMMT confirm. According to figures released last week by the SMMT, Ford topped the July sales chart with 18,442 registrations and totaled 176,792 cars registered this year. July also showed the company increasing its retail car market share to [...]

VOLVO is now officially owned by Chinese giant Geely following the acquisition of a 100 percent stake from Ford. The completion of the deal has just been announced in a London ceremony. Volkswagen Group of America cheif exec Stefan Jacoby will take over the help as president and CEO of Volvo Cars. He replaces Brit [...]

FORD has revealed it cut short-cycle rental business in June in order to improve the brand’s residual values. This tallies with the consolidation of Ford sales, that has seen the previous best-selling Fiesta slip to third place in the UK sales charts. However, thanks to early-year success, the Fiesta remains the UK’s best seller year-to-date, [...]

RENAULT is the big winner in European car sales, but the market overall is down by more than 8 percent. JATO Dynamics blames poor sales in Germany, which means the year-to-date EU market improvement has fallen to below 3 percent. The UK market was up, though, and Spain offered encouragement by bucking the recession in [...]