Ford lifts Europe output as models spur sales

Ford Motor Co. increased its first-quarter production target in Europe after sales of the Fiesta and Ka models surpassed forecasts, the carmaker's chief executive officer for the region said in an interview.

Ford will produce 460,300 cars, or 4.6 percent more than originally planned, John Fleming, CEO of Ford of Europe, said before the Geneva auto show. With the increase, the company will make about 117,000 vehicles more than a year earlier, when it idled factories to reduce inventories.

"January and February, in truth, were higher than we expected," Fleming said by telephone from Ford's European headquarters in Cologne, Germany.

Even after the strong start to 2010, Dearborn, Michigan- based Ford is sticking with its forecast for a drop in the market for European car sales of as much as 15 percent this year partly because of economic instability related to Greece's debt crisis. Discounts are also on the rise after governments halted scrapping incentives.

"There's much more pressure in the market than there was even last year," said Fleming, who also heads manufacturing and labor affairs globally at Ford. "Nobody really wants to lose a significant amount of volume, and there's absolutely been no capacity shaken out of the market."

Passenger-car registrations rose 13 percent in January in the European Union, led by increases in France, Italy and the U.K., according to data compiled by Brussels-based European Automobile Manufacturers' Association.

Limited Discounts

While the Ford brand boosted deliveries by 5.6 percent, its market share dropped to 8.7 percent last month from 9.3 percent a year earlier, while Volkswagen AG and Renault SA's namesake brands as well as PSA Peugeot Citroen added share.