Ford F-Series Pickup Wins December, Full-Year Sales Races

Cars and Drivers

Published: January 3, 2018 1:15 pm

Last Updated: January 12, 2020 4:53 am

Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) sold 89,385 F-Series pickups in December, topping sales of General Motors Co.’s (NYSE: GM) Chevy Silverado by 21,709 units. Adding in sales of the GMC Sierra, however, GM outsold Ford in the monthly pickup wars by 4,727 units. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V.’s (NYSE: FCAU) Ram pickup sales dropped 5% year over year to 40,390 units sold in the month.

For the full year, Ford F-Series sales came in at 896,764 units, a 9.3% increase over the 2016 total. Silverado sales rose 1.9% in 2017 to 585,864 and Sierra sales dipped 1.7% to 217,943. Sales of FCA’s Ram pickups rose 2.0% in 2017 to 556,790 units.

Ford F-Series pickup sales rose 2.1% year over year in December compared with an increase of 24.7% in Silverado sales and 13.5% in Sierra sales. Ram sales were off 7% compared with December 2016.

Other full-size pickups on offer in the United States are the Tundra from Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM) and the Nissan Titan. Toyota Tundra sales for December totaled 10,886, down 2.2% year over year. Full-year sales rose 0.7% to 115,489 units.

Nissan reported December Titan sales of 5,582 units, up 27% year over year. For the full year, Titan sales rose nearly 142% to 52,924.

Sales of GM’s midsize Chevy Colorado pickup rose 2.1% to 9,626 units, and sales of the GMC Canyon fell 14.4% to 3,467 in December. Colorado sales rose 3.9% for the year to 112,996 units, and Canyon sales tumbled 14.3% to 32,106 units. Toyota sold 18,705 of the company’s midsize Tacoma pickups, up 6.8% compared with December of last year. For the year, Tundra sales rose 3.4% to 198,124 units.

Nissan’s midsize Frontier sold 5,880 units in December, a drop of 3.1% year over year. For the year, Frontier sales dropped 14.5% to 74,360 units. Honda Motor Co. Ltd. (NYSE: HMC) sold 2,854 units of its Ridgeline midsize pickup, down 30.1% from 4,085 units in December of 2016.

In the full-size pickup segment, December sales of 223,887 vehicles from the Detroit Three pencils out to a Ford market share of 39.9% (a month-over-month decrease of 1.0 point). GM’s share came in at 30.2% for the Chevy Silverado (up 4.1 points) and 11.8% (up 1.4 points) for the GMC Sierra. Ram’s market share totaled 18% (down 4.7 points).

For the year, Ford’s share of the full-size pickup market came in at 39.7%, while Silverado nabbed 26.0%, Sierra took 9.6%, and Ram rang up 24.7%.