Ford has released June’s sales figures, and the blue oval has had a great month. Ford’s sales are up 7% for June compared to last year and year-to date sales are also up 7% with 1.14 million vehicles sold. While a lot of Ford’s cars and trucks did well, including the F-Series which sold 55,025 units and the Fusion selling 24, 433. One vehicle in particular had a stellar month for Ford.

The 2013 Ford Escape spent less than five days, on average, on dealership lots. Escape sales are up 28% over last June with 28,500 sold last month compared to 22,274 sold last June. Year-to-date, the Escape has sold just 3.7% more this year than in 2012, but that’s more indicative of the April launch of the 2013 models and the slow wind down of 2012s than an anomaly in sales during June.

I’ll confess, I thought Ford was crazy to change the formula that made the 2012 Escape one of their best-selling vehicles. That formula was to build an SUV on a crossover chassis with truck-derived styling. I thought the truck styling, which set the Escape apart from the eggs on wheels that most crossovers look like, was what drew the buyers. Turns out that an egg-on-wheels is even more popular, so there must be something else setting the Escape apart. The gas mileage is good, 22-city and 31-highway, but that is matched by the Chevy Equinox (and the better-looking and more truck-looking GMC Terrain) and Honda CR-V and beaten soundly by the Mazda CX-5.

All this means that the Escape won’t be heavily incentivized any time soon, that was to be expected considering how new the crossover is. Hopefully the surge in Escape sales will lead other manufacturers to offer steeper discounts to try to keep up.

You can see Ford’s full sales report here.