Ford Motor, Britain’s best–selling carmaker, has cut British list prices for cars and trucks and cancelled cash-back offers, saying it wants to make vehicle prices easier for buyers to understand.
The company today that it had cut prices by amounts ranging from 5 to 13 percent, depending on the model. At the same time, it scrapped rebates of 800 lbs. to 1,300 lbs. ($1,181 to $1,919).
DaimlerChrysler, Honda Motor, and others have reduced prices in the last month, after the British Government ordered automakers to change the way vehicles were sold and distributed. The government order was intended to bring Britain into line with Continental Europe, where prices are about 10 percent lower.
The Ford brand has 17 percent of the British car market, which is Europe’s fourth largest, with 2.2 million cars bought last year. Ford sold about 400,000 of those.
Ford also said it was adding a three-year manufacturers warranty to new cars, replacing the one year warranty, which buyers had to pay to extend on many models.