4th month in a row of lackluster Mustang sales

Oh, and I went thru Autotrader.com's site today, there's a couple pages of nice used GT's for sale there, in just a 200 mile radius of here ( south Louisiana) The posted prices are above what new MSRP's are. Go figure.

they have to get that negative equity out of it somehow.....

What negative equity? That part's born by the original buyer. The price they're asking for a used car is way out of proportion to new ones. That's greed, pure and simple.

Excellent comments Shaggydog.

I agree with you, I think the plastic on most of the new Mustang's interior is totally unacceptable. Very hard & cheap looking. I seems to scratch far too easily.

Like most of us here, I'm a Mustang die hard and will eventually be getting one so I'll be putting up with the crapola interior. I imagine that the same as you and your friend felt, the interior look and feel comes off cheap compared to the Asian brand competition and ends up turning off a lot of potential customers.

I really don't know what in the world Ford was thinking when they selected the interior materials on the 05 Mustang. And this was after all the hoopla Ford made in the press about how much $$ they were investing in interiors.

You made another very insightful comment, that is the large size of the new Mustang. I'm now seeing a number of 05/06 Stangs on the road and they look huge. The S197 Stang is the longest, widest & heaviest Mustang ever except for the 1971-1973 Stangs, which were a sales flop mostly due to their large size & heavy weight for their interior room. I'd guess the large size and look are a turn off to many potential customers.

you didnt say it was a dealer, i thought it was private parties......

In my view all comments about the size/interior aside there are only two things hurting mustang sales. Price and availability. There simply have never been enough GT's in the pipeline, most people will not order a car when they are in the market for a new car, they are ready to drive home with something/anything and will likely go elsewhere. Considering the desirability of the GT and its unavailability wheres the mystery their. Now you add to that the fact many dealers are marking them up or adding a bunch of high priced dealer options and your practically telling buyers to go elsewhere, especially in a car buying climate where deals/sales abound. Having a loaded to the gills v6 priced around 25,000 with no incentives as the only option on the lot isnt going to entice alot of buyers.

For me it's No cars in the lot to drive and the markup. I like driving my future car and our dealer doesn't even know when he'll have a coupe with a stick to test out. They well offer it at MSRP, but I'll holding out that a ford dealer around here well come through next year with "X" amount over invoice through Costco,that is usually $100-400 that I've seen in past years!

In the hunt for keeping costs down, sometimes they just don't make the right calls. The interior materials are an obvious way to impress the car buyer. Being cheap in this area is just plain stupid. I mean, it just wouldn't cost that much more to put some nice plastics in there. Maybe by 2007 they will make some improvements here.

Since when did July, August, September & October become winter months?

I say good. Hope sales continue to drop. Less of them out there makes mine more unique.

Availability

I'm in the same boat as 1200Bruce: I visited my dealer in the spring, expressed my interest in a Mustang GT with manual transmission. They of course had NO GT's. I've been back a few times to speak to the same salesman. They have no GT's that aren't bought, so no car I can test drive. They have no idea when they might have an available GT to test drive, manual or even automatic. And it's been seven months now!

I stopped by a dealer in Columbus, Ohio over the summer that had several GT's. They wouldn't let me drive one unless I commited to a purchase price beforehand - and they wanted $4,000 over sticker. Gee, let me think....no thanks.

I haven't bought a different car yet, but my interest in a new Mustang is slowly but surely fading. It's a cool car, but not cool enough that Ford can screw around like this.

Great post as always 351CJ

Agree with most of what you wrote. Seems like the poor v6/v8 mix has led to the shortage leading to price gouging by dumb/greedy/short-sighted dealers. I don't think retro is dead at all--check out the success of the Mini, Beetle, the 300c, etc. I don't think the two door segment is dead, either. I think DC blew it by not making the Charger a two door (they should call the current four door Charger a Magnum sedan). Regarding pricing I would STILL like to see some kind of low option v8 LX-type package.

I suspect Ford's going to loose a LOT of Stang sales like this. I share your pain. Only reason I haven't bought anything else and waited for mine is, there is nothing else I'm remotely interested in. If there was , I'd have been long gone by now.amnit:

So when did July & August become "autumn" months?

To test you theory I went back and looked at monthly sales data for some prior years. Over the past few years, Mustang sales normally are highest in April & May and lowest in September.

January & February are usually weak months, but November & December are normally good sales months, so that sort of blows your theory. I guess I'd explain the Nov & Dec good sales as the Xmas present factor and the poor Jan & Feb sales as the combination of winter and Xmas spending hangover.

In any case, what should be concerning Ford right now is that October sales were barely above Sept - below the historical sales pickup in October. In addition, July and Aug sales were not good.

Looking at the data and the excellent comments that many of you posted in this thread, I've come to the following conclusion:

Demand for GTs is still strong, driven by the gearhead & Mustang cult factors. Supply shortages and dealer gouging is what is limiting GT sales right now. There is not a problem on the GT side of the equation. GT customers will put up with the Mustang's short comings as the GT is fast, loud and cool as hell. As dealers finally give up on their markups and have GTs on the lot, sales should remain strong for quite some time.

As far as the V6 Mustang goes - Dearborn, we have a problem. It's become clear to me that the average customer (non gearhead, non Mustang cult member) is passing over the Mustang V6. The V6 Mustang is not in sync. with the mainstream market for "sporty" / "personal" cars. For those consumers who are not concerned about performance (are members of the Mustang cult), the V6 Mustang falls short of it's import brand competition in areas of fit & finish, quality (especially interior), plus amenities and comfort features that consumers want.

We're doing our part in Canada!

My daughter in Montreal just bought an 06' V6 with pony pkg.I have an 04Mach 1.If all families would buy in multiples we wouldn't be in this jam.

man was i confused when i read this thread but then i realized this guy replied to a post nearly a year old LOL

It's funny how quickly everyone becomes Sales Marketing experts and Financial Advisors....