Reading into sales figures can be a bit like reading tea leaves or palms. Sometimes, you can draw clear conclusions: Of course a lame cheap hatchback is outsold by, say, a full-size pickup truck. This is America, after all. But Ford’s announcement that, in June 2021, the gas-fed Mustang coupe and convertible were outsold by the new all-electric Mustang Mach-E SUV is fully in “shake the magic eight ball for answers” territory.
Is it a big deal that a curvaceous electrified crossover bearing the Mustang name and a few classic Mustang styling cues has passed its iconic namesake, a vehicle long associated with internal-combustion hooliganism and fun, in sales? Absolutely. It isn’t as if the Mach-E is no great shakes; even outside of its more powerful GT form, the Mach-E is fun to drive and eye-catching out on the road. But clearly the world is turning a corner when an electrified Mustang is snatching more sales than the original pony car.
The Mach-E saw 2,465 sales in June, a few hundred more than the Mustang’s 2,240. Even though this is the first time the Mach-E has pulled ahead in the sales race with the traditional Mustang, June sales weren’t the EV’s best. Back in February, Ford sold 3,739 Mustang Mach-Es; since, the electric SUV’s monthly sales have hovered just under 2,000. The regular Mustang saw a 2021 monthly sales high in April, moving 8,000 units. Every other month save for June, it was in the 4,000-5,000-unit range.
All this is to say the numbers alone don’t paint a clear picture of why the Mach-E-vs.-Mustang sales race suddenly flipped, because the numbers have been a little all over the place.
We reached out to Ford for clarification, and found out that Mustang inventories were impacted by the ongoing chip shortage rippling across the auto industry, particularly in April and May, when Mustang production was actually halted altogether. Sales for those months likely represented a sell-off of whatever Mustang ground stock existed at dealerships nationwide, hence the seemingly precipitous sales slide from April’s 8,000 units to 4,436 in May. A Ford representative also confirmed that the Mach-E received some “priority” as a hot new product, but added that the Mach-E’s sales represent real orders that are being filled as they come in, which, along with the EV’s February sales high of 3,739 units, dispels the notion that June sales were somehow a “glut” drop of pent-up Mach-E orders.
So, yeah, the Mach-E outsold the Mustang, but there are some asterisks. We aren’t entering the end-times because an electric Mustang SUV is out-selling the Mustang, because in all likelihood, the Mustang will retake its sales position ahead of the Mach-E as the chip issue subsides. Or perhaps not. We’ll have to wait and see; in the meantime, consider it nifty that Ford’s EV has enough appeal to even draw close enough to a production-limited Mustang in the sales race.
