Lincoln's sales are increasing faster than its rivals

5665 Views 11 Replies 5 Participants Last post by zep, Jul 2, 2014

Truthiness

Discussion Starter · Jun 24, 2014

Take a look at this chart that shows the percent change in US sales (January - May) for luxury car brands. While Lincoln may have had a lower number of sales to start with, it is still quite the achievement to have this level of growth for Lincoln. If Lincoln can continue to keep up this level of growth as it releases more models in the future, then maybe they will really be able to rejoin the big leagues of luxury autos.

Another thing to look at is this chart that shows the percentage change in luxury vehicle price. As you can see, the trend is towards lower cost luxury, and Lincoln is near the forefront of this movement. What do you do if people can't afford luxury? Make luxury cheaper.

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zep

· #2 · Jun 24, 2014

Your logic is flawed. Percentages lie and Lincolns is lying straight to your face. Because they have a lower sales volume YoY than rivals smaller incremental gains translate into much larger percentage gains, where as rivals have to post a much higher number to gain significantly.

If you sell 10 cars in one year and sell 1 more car the following year that is a 10% gain YoY

If you sold 100 cars per year you would need to sell 10 cars to achieve the same percentage growth YoY.

What do you do if people can't afford luxury? Make luxury cheaper.

This is participation ribbon, everyone gets hugs me too culture. Luxury is exclusive and above all not cheap, what is cheap luxury? Vaporware, better yet a marketing strategy it doesn;t exist, and if someone says it does they're lying to you. If you believe them, well that's a different story

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zep

· #5 · Jun 25, 2014

Davisjl said:
Although Lincoln is doing quite well compared to the last four years... it's a long way to go to get back to the early 2000's numbers where they were selling 150k units each year.

Keep in mind, units is one thing... but the real numbers are in the profit margins. I haven't looked at Ford's financials to see how Lincoln is fairing... I don't even know if they break down their sales to show how much/little Lincoln is contributing to Ford.

Lincoln has become its own separate entity now so that break down won't be shown any longer. I'm wondering if the method to the madness was to in fact mask how little of an effect Lincoln has on the overall bottom line?

But indeed, margin is KING!

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zep

· #7 · Jun 26, 2014 (Edited)

Don't be defensive now, you mentioned that lincoln had a lower innitial figure but did not preface the skew it creates. When you say things like this...

If Lincoln can continue to keep up this level of growth as it releases more models in the future, then maybe they will really be able to rejoin the big leagues of luxury autos.

...It makes it seem like you don't understand them one bit. As these levels of growth are ENTIRELY dependant on Lincoln's lower raw figures. IF steady raw gains continue the percentage of growth will actually start to fall as Lincoln sells more and more models...

On another note I posted this yesterday...

2014 YTD Sales

MKZ: 15,986

CTS: 13,834
ATS: 12,552

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zep

· #12 · Jul 2, 2014

Truthiness said:
If Lincoln keeps up the growth it is doing now as a percent then year over year the company will actually grow exponentially. So I still stand by my original point.

Lincoln only has so many models, and it only operates in a few markets, and has limited production capacity because of that. Achieving this level of growth as a percentage when you consider all of these factors I still think is a great sign for Lincoln.

You're completely ignoring the raw figures, as Lincoln gets larger and larger it becomes increasingly difficult to keep up a consistent percentage rate of growth. Exponential growth requires exponential production capabilities which you've mentioned Lincoln does not have and cannot have because its impossible. Besides exponential growth is one of THE most damaging things that can happen to a business...

I have considered the factors and don't consider it all that impressive BECAUSE of the factors that give said growth. I'm pulling for Lincoln, but unbridled optimism based on magic math have no place here.

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