Mr. Worldwide: Mustang Takes Off in China
The Ford Mustang might have been born in America, but it’s now doing burnouts around the world. Helped along with fresh sales in places like Germany and the U.K., global registrations topped 125,000 cars last year. Your humble author saw his first right-hand-drive Mustang last January.
One country where it’s doing particularly well? China.
According to the company, sales of the very ‘Murican Mustang rose 35 percent in China last year compared to the one before, retaining its crown as the best-selling two-door sports coupe for a second year. Data shows the model sources much of its popularity in that country from young buyers and women.
Ford says of the 125,809 Mustangs registered worldwide in 2017, a total of 81,866 of those were in the United States. Back-of-napkin math tells us that just over one-third of all Mustang registrations are occurring in export markets.
“For years, Mustang was unobtainable for customers on most parts of the planet,” said Erich Merkle, a sales analyst at Ford. “It could only be found on TV or the internet, and now it rolls down streets from Beijing to São Paulo.” The man has a point. He further goes on to say that the most popular configuration worldwide is the Mustang GT, with its 5.0-liter V8 (as it should be).
Good to see that “Line-Lock” translates well into any language.
Here at home, the Mustang crested 100,000 sales in 2015 for the first time since 2007, but has since fallen back to roughly 75 percent of that volume. Yearly sales last year were about half what they were when Ford introduced the fifth-gen S197 model in 2005. In 1967, a heady 607,568 Mustangs were sold to an eager American public.
Never far from the limelight, Mustang has received an extra bit of attention over the last week, with announcements of NASCAR duty, an upcoming GT500 version, and a drag-ready Cobra Jet.
Since global exports began in 2015, Ford has sold 418,000 Mustangs in 146 countries around the world through to the end of last year. Incremental sales volume, yo.
[Images: Ford China]
Matthew buys, sells, fixes, & races cars. As a human index of auto & auction knowledge, he is fond of making money and offering loud opinions.
More by Matthew Guy
Comments
Join the conversation
Chinese people living the American dream.... love it.
To give you an idea in a 20+ million per year market; Porche China sales were over 65 000 in 2016 compared to Mustangs 3 thousand odd. China represented 25% of all Porsches sold globally. When the Mustang hits those kinds of numbers, then you can play the Star Spangled Banner. Even in the 1.2 million a year Aussie vehicle market Porsche sold 4 400 vehicles and over 9 000 Mutangs. So, better still I'd like to see 130 000 Mustangs sold in China per year to equal the Aussie market.