Yesterday, I mentioned in my blog post that my wife and I rented a Ford Focus a couple years ago when going to a wedding. After that, I found this article about the automaker increasing the production of this popular model.

In April of this year, the Ford Motor Company announced that it was increasing production of its Focus brand by 30 percent this year. Ford is doing this to respond to the increasing demand for this popular and hot-selling vehicle. Its recent redesign and the SYNC system assuredly have something to do with its popularity, too.

The latest incarnation of the current Ford Focus began coming off the assembly line in 2007. During the first three months of 2008, the automaker already sold more than 49,000 units. That’s nearly a 25 percent increase over the same period from last year! That’s why the automaker decided to make more of these Ford cars.

With the boost in production, this means there will be 245,000 units of this model rolling off the assembly line this year. It currently claims about 7.5 percent of the small car market in the United States. In 2007, however, Ford was only producing about 191,000 units and the Focus only claimed a little more than one percent of the same market.

This news is also great for the workers at the Wayne County plant that produces the Focus. The 2,800 workers will likely get an opportunity to work some overtime and even weekend shifts throughout the year. With the recent downturn of the economy, everybody can get all the help they can get!

To purchase your new Ford Focus, please visit our IL Ford dealerships or our Missouri Ford dealership today.

For the last couple decades, the Ford Motor Company has been on a rollercoaster ride. At one time, it was one of the leaders in the entire auto industry. Then, for a few years after that, the automaker got a bad “rep” for having low quality vehicles. In fact, there used to be an adage that said that the letters in Ford stood for “Found on Road Dead.”

But all that has changed. Now, Ford is back on top of its game and the quality is back!

Study after study shows that Ford cars are once again the quality they once were. They’ve even improved in other areas, too. In order to stay competitive in today’s world, Ford also leads the industry in environmentalism, safety and even smart systems. Have you heard of the Ford SYNC system? That’s just one of the smart systems currently exclusive to Ford. With hands-free communication and the ability to control many features with just the sound of your voice, some analysts say this is one of the main reasons people are flocking back to Ford.

I haven’t owned a Ford, but I have rented one. Two years ago, we rented a Ford Focus to travel out of town to a friend’s wedding. Our car was junky, to say the least. But when we stepped in the rented Ford Focus, it was almost like a luxury vehicle to us. It drove nice and it was even great on gas! Of course, that was when gas prices were still around $2.00 a gallon (I think). And the vehicles have only gotten better since then.

If you haven’t considered a Ford, don’t let the reputation it had several years ago scare you away. Check one out today at our Ford dealership - Waterloo or our Missouri Ford dealers and prepare to be impressed!

In the last few months, you’ve probably read story after story about how Ford is laying off workers and trying to get them to retire early. This is done to match the demand for Ford vehicles with the number of workers making them. Luckily for Ford, though, several foreign markets are selling cars like hotcakes and creating a profit for the automaker.

The Russian market is one example of this. While many North American factories have downsized, the Ford Motor Company is adding workers to a factory in Russia to keep up with the demand for the product in the region. By doing this, Ford increases that country’s production of vehicles by 75 percent!

That’s an amazing feat for the automaker, too. That means the workers will be making 125,000 vehicles by next year.
The Vsevolozhsk plant in St. Petersburg is the facility getting these new workers. Employees there create the Ford Focus hatchback, which has become the most popular imported brand in the country since 2007. The factory will also begin production of the Mondeo, another popular export of the Ford Motor Company.

Russia’s great sales figures are one reason why Ford is looking to the eastern European region to increase sales globally. That particular market sold nearly two million units in 2007, which is about 72,000 more than it sold the year before.

Unfortunately, the North American market isn’t doing that well. But the figures do look promising. With any luck, maybe Ford’s domestic market will perform as well (or even better) than the ones overseas.

Everybody keeps talking about how bad the United States economy is right now. Some say we’re in a recession. Others point to the housing crisis as a sign of something big to come. And the rising gas prices sure aren’t helping.

But despite these problems, two Ford vehicles, the Edge and the Focus, have shown a huge increase in sales during the month of March. In fact, Ford sold more Focus models last month than it did in any other month since August 2005! Compared with the same periods from a year ago, Focus sales have increased 35 percent in the entire first quarter and 36 percent in March. These figures have helped the automaker regain is share in the competitive small-car market.

For the Ford Edge, sales figures were up 35 percent last month as compared to March 2007. But more impressively, sales were up more than 50 percent in the first quarter compared to last year’s first quarter. The California market accounted for 10 percent of those sales in 2008, but retail sales along both coasts doubled when compared to the first quarter of 2007.

According to Jim Farley, Ford group vice president, the growing sales reflect the fact that “customers who haven’t traditionally even considered our products are starting to warm up to Ford and is just an indication of more to come.”

If this trend continues, Ford just might fight its way back to the top position in the automotive industry. With all of the work the company has been doing, no other automaker deserves it more than Ford.

When you hear the word “fiesta,” you generally think of a party. And with the Ford Motor Company’s Fiesta model, the idea of a party isn’t too far off target.

Ford Europe is going to introduce the new and improved model at the upcoming Geneva Auto Show in March. The event takes place from March 6-16, to be exact. Although designed and developed in Europe, the Fiesta will be available for sale in markets like Asia, South Africa, Australia and the Americas between now and 2010. The Ford Fiesta is also the company’s first major product of global development, meaning that it will basically be available in its current format in a more widespread market.

According to Ford CEO Alan Mulally, the Fiesta strives to “create a world standard for small-car quality, design and comfort in a vehicle that is as exciting to drive as it is to look at.” In addition, Ford hopes that the Fiesta will bring a broader demographic to the small car market, including a younger crowd and buyers in places like Britain, Spain, and China.

But the Ford Fiesta is not new to the public. It has been around since 1976 and has enjoyed great success in the past. Last year, the model sold more than 378,000 units in Europe alone, making it the second-bestselling model after the Focus. The new Fiesta might be quite different from the older ones you remember, but the automaker wants to keep the name to build on its already successful brand recognition. Keep watching for one of these compact yet comfortable cars among the other Ford vehicles at one of our local dealerships.