I usually refrain from commenting and the Ford Communications team will hate that I’m doing this but I can’t help but make a couple of clarifying comments:
1. You are correct that corporate accounting is very strict but just for everyone’s full understanding - Ford Motor Company sells vehicles to our dealers, therefore the company accounts for vehicle sales revenue when units are released to our dealers. This is often referred to as wholesale. Reported wholesale revenue methodology varies by country, export/import laws, joint ventures, contract manufacturing and shipment method but typically, as far as manufacturer accounting, is concerned, vehicles in transit are accounted for as sold. This would include released vehicles in our logistics systems awaiting shipment. For the GT, there is the added complexity of Multimatic releasing to Ford and Ford then releasing to the dealer. These sales are reported in our corporate financials and are the primary revenue source of Ford Motor Company, and therefore accounting rules are strictly followed.
2. Publicly provided automotive sales reports are based on dealer sales to customers and are primarily self reported by the dealers through various systems. This methodology also varies by country, type of sale, manufacturer, etc. and typically have some sort of lag. The quantity of vehicles and time between a manufacturer selling to the dealer and the dealer showing as sold to a customer is measured in multiple ways (dealer inventory/days to turn/days supply, etc.). These numbers are watched very closely by the industry, media and analysts. There is a whole cottage industry dedicated to this including trying to back into production and sales numbers by talking to suppliers, dealers, counting vehicle registrations, etc. The GT dealer inventory and days to turn is extremely low but all of these factors still apply and the difference between GT’s produced/released/sold is especially influenced by vehicles awaiting or in transit to dealers/customers.
3. The systems producing the data that you are looking at are designed for much higher volumes. They are more than robust for corporate financials, less so sometimes for industry analysis, but definitely not suited to track individual unit production and sale. For reference, in 2016 these systems tracked 6.651 million vehicles just for Ford Motor Company wholesales.
4. The sales reports that you are referring to are U.S. dealer sales only and don’t capture global sales or vehicles produced for company inventory.
Due to all of the above, it is pointless to try to back into any meaningful assessment of overall GT production from these reports.
Therefore, let me answer a couple of questions:
1. Are we behind the original production schedule?
Yes. We don’t release detailed production schedules and the plan was never for 250 units in the first year, but we have acknowledged that we are behind our original schedule and that is why we have notified and sincerely apologized to our affected customers for the delay.
2. Are we building 5 per week now?
Yes.
3. Can we build significantly faster then 5 per week?
No. There will be natural ups and downs any in low volume production program and we will build as fast as we can, but maintaining quality is our first priority.
4. Due to the delay, will we cease production at less than 1000 vehicles?
No.
Those directly affected can call their concierge for more information about their specific order. I hope this answers the high level questions and it is as much detail as I plan to go into. Thanks for your interest and support of the Ford GT!
