DETROIT — Nearly a year after launching the Ford Blue Advantage used-vehicle digital marketplace, Ford Motor Co. plans to enhance the platform with a 14-day/1,000-mile money-back guarantee.
The automaker is betting that Ford Blue Advantage will help its retailers win a larger slice of the used-vehicle sales pie and stop defections to third-party sites such as Carvana.
This month, General Motors launched its own used-vehicle platform called CarBravo.
Ford Blue Advantage is powered by Autotrader and brings together certified used-vehicle inventory from dealers across the country. Customers can search by vehicle type, color, mileage and a number of other options.
The site features guaranteed pricing and Kelley Blue Book’s Price Advisor tool. The listed inventory, which includes non-Ford vehicles, is backed by warranties under two different certification levels: gold and blue.
Gold covers Ford vehicles up to 6 years old with fewer than 80,000 miles, and blue covers vehicles from any brand that are no more than 10 years old and have fewer than 120,000 miles.
Ford says internal data shows traffic to the Ford Blue Advantage website is up 500 percent over its prior certified pre-owned website, and that CPO sales rose 26 percent in 2021.
Shortly after the site’s launch in February 2021, Ford said that half of its roughly 3,000 dealers had signed up and that many were already experiencing noticeable sales bumps.
