Puma sold almost 83,300 units in Europe in the first half, almost 47,000 more than in the year-ago period. The growth is also because the production was significantly affected by the halts in March, April and May 2020 due to the pandemic.
Moreover, the sales structure of Ford changed in Europe. Its highest-selling models in 2020 were Focus, 172,500 units, 50,000 fewer year-on-year and Fiesta, more than 155,000 units, 72,000 fewer than in 2019. Puma ranked third, with about 118,000 units.
Puma is almost 20,000 units ahead of Fiesta in the first half of 2021, whose sales stood at 63,000 units, nearly double the sales of Focus.
Ford Romania returned to working in three shifts at its Craiova plant in July and to a pace of 1,000 cars/ day.
Ford’s Craiova plant, along with the plant in Cologne, Germany, is less affected by the microchip shortage, considering other plants of the carmaker stopped working for even as much as over 20 days in 2021, while Craiova witnessed a six-day halt and a number of days of working in two shifts instead of three. Ford made this decision to protect its best-selling models, Puma and Fiesta.
Ford assembled 91,148 units in the first half of 2021, an increase of 20% on the year-ago period, Romania’s carmaker association ACAROM data show.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)