Ford SLASHES Pre-Reg sales in Europe to boost Profits

Ford is cutting back on pre-reg sales in Europe – and on fleet sales – as it aims to consolidate its return to profitability in Europe.

We’ve banged on about pre-reg sales – effectively sales by card dealers to themselves – because they can massively skew the sales figures for new cars we’ve seen rise inexorably in recent years.

As far back as 2012 we were asking if new car sales figure are a fantasy, we’ve revealed that in Germany pre-reg accounts for a third of new car sales and that half of all DS sales in Germany aren’t to real buyers.

It’s not hard to understand why car makers and dealers play the pre-reg game, but even though there are good reasons to do it, it does skew the market considerably.

Dealers often do it to hit targets and unlock bonuses that more than off-set the ‘loss’ on the car, and many car makers push pre-reg cars as a way of taking slow-selling models out of the new car inventory so they can be offered as ‘used’, and in the process not be seen to be offering big discounts on new cars.

There are other tricks too, like registering a sale in one low cost EU country and subsequently de-registering it, exporting it and selling it in another EU country, but it’s the pre-reg stuff that really skews the numbers.

But now Ford has decided to get a handle on a pre-reg system that seems to have got out of control, and have decided they will limit pre-reg numbers in the UK and Europe to just four per cent.

Ford are also focussing on private sales at the expense of Fleet sales, with their return to profitability in Europe last year something they are intent on maintaining.

What reducing pre-reg sales will do to Ford’s sales numbers going forward is hard to judge as there’s no real official numbers for what Ford has done in recent years to boost new car sales, but even if number drop, profits should increase.

“Turnover is vanity, Profit is sanity”