Ford cars lead

Press, 4 August 1983, Page 20

Ford cars lead

Ford’s Escort, Sierra and Fiesta occupied the leading positions in Britain’s top 10 sellers’ list in June. In New Zealand the Cortina, which has now been replaced by the Telstar, was at the top of the list, while the Laser was fifth.

In Britain, the Sierra was the best-selling car in the January-June period and the Cortina occupied the same position in New Zealand.

There were 507 Cortinas registered in New Zealand in June and next on the list was the Honda Accord, with 355 cars registered. The Holden Commodore (336) was third and it was followed by the Mitsubishi Sigma (320), Ford Laser (309), Honda Civic (307), Toyota Corolla (246), Mazda 323 (195), Holden Camira (194) and Nissan Sunny (180). With only 4722 cars registered in June the downward

trend continued and, in fact, the motor trade recorded its poorest June since 1969. Customer orders for the new Ford models during July were strong, according to Ford’s public affairs manager, Mr Tony Wright. His company believes this is indicative of new activity in the market. The company has also just announced, very competitive prices for its new Telstar range. At the bottom of the list is the 1.6 L at $14,995, then come the 1.6 GL ($15,695), 2.0 GL manual ($16,266), 2.0 GL automatic ($16,960), 2.0 Ghia manual ($18,671), 2.0 Ghia automatic ($19,849), TXS manual ($18,291) and TXS automatic ($21,198). This new Ford range is very keenly priced and, in fact, the tags are, in almost every case, lower than predicted last month at the news media launch of the Telstar series.