Ford sold 170,681 new vehicles in the U.S. in August, a 10.3% drop from a year earlier, according to Ford Motor Company’s own August 2026 sales release. But three of the brand’s most distinct nameplates moved in the opposite direction: Ranger, Maverick and Mustang each posted real double-digit growth in the same month the overall brand slid.

Ranger sales climbed 18.9% to 6,033 units, Maverick rose 14.4% to 13,680, and Mustang gained 12.7% to 3,647, all per Ford’s release. Those three nameplates span three very different price points and buyer types — a compact pickup, a body-on-frame midsize truck and a two-door sports car — which makes it harder to write off the gains as one segment having a good month.

The overall decline traces almost entirely to Ford’s own product decisions rather than a broad falloff in demand. The Escape crossover collapsed 88.2%, from 12,290 units a year ago to just 1,446 in August, as Ford winds the model down at Louisville Assembly to retool the plant for electric vehicle production, a shift Yahoo Finance’s analysis of the sales data ties directly to that phase-out. Combined with a steep cut to Mustang Mach-E production, those two model lines alone account for roughly 94% of Ford’s entire August sales decline.

Key Points

• Total August 2026 sales: 170,681 units, down 10.3% year over year.
• Ranger up 18.9%, Maverick up 14.4%, Mustang up 12.7% — all against the year-ago month.
• Escape sales fell 88.2%, from 12,290 units to 1,446, as Ford discontinues the model.
• Ford’s EV sales fell 79.4% to 2,197 units, with E-Transit down 97% after federal EV tax credits expired.

Trucks, which make up the core of Ford’s business, held up far better than the headline number suggests. F-Series sales fell just 1.2% to 67,504 units — still 40% of everything Ford sold in August — even as the truck line worked through supply constraints tied to aluminum shortages from fires at a Novelis plant in Oswego, New York earlier in the year, per Yahoo Finance’s reporting. Super Duty production has been climbing back, more than doubling from January’s output through July as the supply chain recovers.

Ford’s EV business had the roughest month on the sheet: electric vehicle sales dropped 79.4% to 2,197 units, and E-Transit sales fell 97% to just 60 vans, a decline the company attributes largely to the federal EV tax credit’s expiration under Public Law 119-21. Put together, the August numbers describe a company shedding a discontinued crossover and throttling back EV production at the same time its cheaper, gas-powered nameplates — the ones under $40,000 with a truck bed or a V8 badge — are the ones actually growing.