Ford dealers will be streamlining their inventory to stock up to 80 percent fewer configurations of the brand’s most popular models.

The Blue Oval launches a so-called “inventory framing” process meaning that Ford dealers will have to cut inventory and leave the most in-demand configurations of the company’s best-selling vehicles, CarBuzz informs. In other words, when you come to a local Ford dealership for purchase, you may not find there a model of a trim level you prefer.

Certainly, Ford will take into account regional specifics and sales data to form stocks. The carmaker will begin reducing the dealer inventory in late January – early February 2022. Nine Ford models are affected by this new approach so far: F-150, Mustang, Ranger, Explorer, Bronco Sport, Escape, and others.

In such a way Ford intends to improve its dealerships profitability and ‘rejuvenate’ stocking. It becomes obvious that the manufacturer is shifting towards a new sales model, the order-based one when customers place orders for specific vehicles they want using Ford’s online ordering platform.

The trend is not so new: challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic seem to change the face of car shopping. Within the last 2 years, we’ve been observing a pronounced uptick in online car sales.