August Pickup Sales

Best-Selling Pickup Trucks: August 2016

Quote :

Things appear to be slowing a bit in some pickup truck segments, as several truck makers had a bad month. However, most are still ahead of where they were this time last year. Some are calling attention to lower-than-usual fuel prices, good credit deals and an economy with room to grow as reasons to stay optimistic, but others are looking at lower levels of growth. If predictions hold out, we’ll likely hit something higher than 17 million total automotive sales by Dec. 31.

This month, the standouts are the smaller pickups. Both the midsize Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon posted another strong month, while their full-size truck counterparts are not doing so well — but maybe that’s not too surprising given how capable and comfortable we found them to be in our 2016 Midsize Pickup Challenge.

That said, it should be called out that the aging Nissan Frontier had another killer month, selling more vehicles than the Colorado and almost as many as the Toyota Tundra. And in our final piece of midsize news, the Honda Ridgeline continues to plug along by selling a good number of vehicles per month, quite comfortable staying the quirky alternative to the mainstream players.

The pickups having the hardest time so far this month (and year) are all the major full-size competitors, especially Nissan: Even with a new Titan XD and a coming Nissan Titan half-ton, added interest does not seem to be there. There are plenty of things going on in the world to distract potential new-truck shoppers, but the fall season typically brings out some good incentive programs as the big players head toward year-end market-share tallies and incoming new models need extra room. We're expecting a strong fourth quarter.

We’ll break down the midsize and full-size pickup segments, as well as letting you know how each pickup truck maker is doing, although it’s pretty clear the General Motors (Chevy and GMC) three-truck strategy is succeeding against the competitors.

PickupTrucks.com

Full Size sales show a weakening economy.

That Frontier has taken off like a scalded cat. What's up with that?

The economy is looking a bit frightful. Something has got to give but in the meantime central banks will probably keep spending money in the hopes of avoiding a recession.

Frontier #'s are wild. There must be huge demand or maybe Nissan is giving them away. Some of that should be rubbing off on the Canyon/Colorado twins.

August 2016 Pickup Sales Breakdown

Quote :

The midsize pickup truck segment continues to grow with the exception of the top-selling Toyota Tacoma, which has experienced a three-month sales slide. August saw the new Honda Ridgeline outsell the GMC Canyon for the first time, as well as the Nissan Frontier outsell the Chevrolet Colorado (and almost outsell the Toyota Tundra). We expect this segment to continue its upward climb to the end of the year as more people move out of cars, SUVs, crossovers and full-size pickups and into a new midsize pickup.

In the full-size pickup segment, it's worth noting (although not directly reflected in the charts below) that if you add the last three months of Chevrolet and GMC full-size pickup sales totals together, GM is closing the gap on Ford. In fact, combined year-to-date totals for Chevy and GMC full-size pickups put them behind Ford by less than 1,300 units; in June it was more than 15,000 units. Of course, when adding both the Chevy and GMC midsize players into that total (see the pickup manufacturers' charts below), GM has a much wider lead over Ford. We don't think anyone is questioning GM's decision to be the only pickup truck manufacturer with three differently sized platforms.

We'll keep an eye on these head-to-head sales battles, which are sure to heat up going into the last sales quarter of the year. Other monthly sales numbers to watch will be Nissan's new half-ton Titan. Will it be able to jump-start Nissan's sluggish sales? And will Ram maintain its slow-and-steady progress to the end of 2016?

PickupTrucks.com