Ford sales rise with boost from discounts

Ford Motor said Friday its U.S. sales rose 6.4% in June to 240,109 vehicles, compared to a year earlier, as the company boosted incentives to jolt sales.

Sales of the mainstream Ford brand rose 6.4% while Lincoln luxury brand sales increased 5.8% for the month.

Discounts are helping fuel the growth. Average industry incentives per vehicle hit an all-time high for June of $3,278, up 3.8% from a year ago, according to LMC and J.D. Power.

But Ford incentives soared 35.5%, compared to a year earlier, to $3,516 per vehicle, according to TrueCar.

Competition may be fueling the discounts. In June, General Motors launched an aggressive ad campaign with a video that showed 840 pounds of concrete blocks being dumped into Ford's aluminum truck bed as well as Silverado's steel truck bed.

Sales of Ford's F-series pickups, the most popular model in the U.S., still rose 28%.

“Strong customer demand has helped us continue growing our truck leadership position, further widening the gap with our nearest competitor versus last year,” Mark LaNeve, Ford's vice president of Marketing and Sales, said in a statement.

Analysts at Edmunds.com, Kelley Blue Book and TrueCar had projected Ford sales increases of 6.2%, 4.6% and 4.4%, respectively.

Overall industry sales growth projections for June ranged from a low of 4.9% at LMC Automotive and J.D. Power to a high of 5.4% at TrueCar.

This year, automakers are on track to sell more than 17.7 million new cars and trucks, according to LMC Automotive. If that happens, the industry will set an all-time record, surpassing last year's record of 17.47 million.