Ford UK Sales By Model : 1975-1984

In the previous ten year period, Ford was taking about 25% of total sales. Now it was around the 30% mark and the difference was the introduction of the small Fiesta model. The Orion had just arrived too but it hadn't had time to make much of an impact. Looking at each model:

Escort: It had become the best selling model, especially with the Mark III from 1981.

Fiesta: A new name for the brand, it took a while to catch on but sales grew consistently and soon taking a quarter of all Ford sales.

Sierra: It had the impossible task of replacing the super popular Cortina and it nearly pulled it off.

Orion: Effectively it was an Escort with a boot, but always seems to be categorised separately.

Granada: The big Ford model peaked in 1979 with the introduction of the Mark II, but fell away quite quickly after that. This sort of car was falling out of favour in Europe.

The Mark II Capri was a strong selling model

Capri: This two door coupé fastback model was replaced by the Mark III model in 1978 but it was really just a revised Mark II and sales fell away in the 1980's.

The chart below needs to have three zeros added to sales, which are in the left hand column. The right side shows the percentage of Ford sales that model took. The percentage figure in the 'Total' column is total share Ford had in the UK market.

Yr	Escort		Fiesta		Sierra		Orion		Granada		Capri		Total
					Cortina
75	104	40			107	41			20	8	28	11	259	22
76	134	41			126	39			28	9	36	11	325	25
77	104	31	41	12	121	35			32	9	43	13	340	26
78	114	29	69	18	139	35			38	10	32	8	392	25
79	132	27	59	12	194	40			52	11	49	10	486	28
80	122	26	92	20	190	41			29	6	31	7	465	31
81	141	31	111	24	160	35			25	5	22	5	459	31
82	167	35	110	23	149	31			29	6	19	4	474	30
83	174	34	120	23	171	25	7	1	24	5	22	4	518	29
84	157	32	125	26	113	23	51	10	23	5	16	3	487	28

Data source: SMMT.

For the following article: 1985-94.

For the first in the series: 1965-74.