The Biggest Story in 2009: Ford

No, Ford doesn’t pay us here at The Car Guide. The reality is this: in the year 2009, Ford was the single biggest success story in the automotive marketplace.

And now we know exactly how big a success story it was. According to their year-end number-crunching press release, Ford has announced that December 2009 marked a 33% increase in sales in their largest market, the US. While definitely good news, a single month increase is a proverbial drop in the bucket. What more interesting is this: 2009 was the first full-year market share increase the Blue Oval has seen since 1995. Although up just a single point to 15%, that increase in market share correlates to the best multi-brand company sales figures of the year. Down 15.39% from 2008, Ford beat out all the import companies (Nissan down 19.05%, Honda down 19.46%, Toyota down 20.18%, and BMW down 20.27) and slaughtered GM and Chrysler who lost 30.07% and 35.9%, respectively.

But that success south of the border pales by comparison to FoMoCo Canada’s figures. The only one of the five largest automakers in Canada to post a positive figure, Ford of Canada ended 2009 with a 6.8% sales gain. By comparison, Toyota was a distant second with a 9.5% sales drop with Honda an even further third with a nearly 20% loss in sales.