This week, Ford announced that its Focus compact is the best-selling vehicle nameplate in the world with 589,709 units delivered during the first six months of 2013, basing its findings on the latest Polk global vehicle registration data.
However, someone disagrees and that someone happens to be Japanese rivaling carmaker Toyota, which according to Detroit News, said it sold 590,760 examples of its Corolla compact in the same period, excluding derivatives like the Matrix.
So how does Toyota explain the discrepancy? A spokesman from Japan’s biggest automotive firm told the Detroit daily that Polk does not receive data from all markets where the Corolla is sold.
Polk, on the other hand, maintains that its data is correct.
“The Polk data reported by Ford earlier this week is accurate based on the single nameplate ‘Ford Focus,’” said Anthony Pratt, a vice president of forecasting at Polk. “Polk does not report on or track global sales data so does not comment on (automaker) sales claims.”
Whatever the case for the number 1 spot, Ford said that its global Focus sales grew by 20 percent in the first half of 2013 from the same period last year, “driven primarily by increasing demand from customers in China and other Asian countries”.
China is the Focus models’ single biggest global market and accounts for one-third of total sales. This year, Focus deliveries in China are up 137 percent from 2012. At the same time, Ford has scheduled two weeks of down time at its Michigan factory that produces the Focus, due to stagnating sales in the States.
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