Truck Wars: Will Ram, Ford or Chevrolet win the battle for America's most popular pickup truck in 2021?
For the 45th consecutive year, the Ford F-Series was America's best-selling truck last year.
Pickup trucks are a huge business in the United States, and every year three big Detroit brands compete for sales leadership.
Despite some setbacks such as parts shortages and low inventory, total US sales rose 3.3% last year, with trucks once again dominating the sales charts.
The Ford F-Series pickup held the top spot in the US last year with sales of 726,003 units. While this represents a 7.8% decrease from 2020 results, it was enough to outsell the runner-up by more than 156,000 sales.
Ford says the F-series, which includes the F-150, F-250 and the like, has been the best-selling truck for 45 years and the best-selling car in the States for 40 years.
Second place was held by a line of RAM pickups (including the 1500 and 2500), which outsold the all-time number two, the Chevrolet Silverado. Ram's 569,389 figure of 1.0 vehicles is up 2020% from its 40,000 result and is about XNUMX units ahead of Chevy.
The Silverado had the biggest sales decline of the big three trucks, dropping 10.7% in 2021 to 529,765 units for the year, but it took third place and outsold fourth place by more than 100,000 sales.
While Ford is claiming leadership in the segment, General Motors, Chevrolet's parent company, is claiming otherwise.
Ram's line of pickups, including the 1500, outsold the Chevrolet Silverado last year.
GM says the Chevy Silverado and its mechanical twin, the GMC Sierra, have combined sales of 768,689 vehicles, giving GM segment leadership, a position the company has held since 2003.
However, if you're just looking at individual model sales, then Ford's victory is undeniable.
What about the underdogs in the truck segment?
GMC Sierra finished in 12th place.th with only 248,923 sales and then came the dawn for fifth place truck Toyota Tundra at 54th ranked overall with 81,959 sales. This is 25% less than in 2020, mainly due to the introduction of a completely new model.
The Nissan Titan ended 2021 with 27,406 sales, landing at 121.st place for a year. Despite a major refresh for the 2020 model, reports say that Nissan has no intention of releasing a next-gen version of the Titan beyond the current model due to slowing sales.
Silverado moved to third place, but GM still claims leadership in the segment.
When it comes to mid-sized pickups – or what we would call just pickups or utes in Australia – the Toyota Tacoma was the leader with sales of just over 252,000 vehicles, narrowly missing out on the top 10.
The second best seller was the Ford Ranger designed and engineered in Australia with sales of 94,755 vehicles. It was ahead of the Jeep Gladiator (89,712) and well ahead of the Chevrolet Colorado (73,008), Nissan Frontier (60,679) and Honda Ridgeline (41,355).
In terms of passenger cars and SUVs, the best-selling non-truck model was the Toyota RAV4 midsize SUV, finishing fourth overall with a gross mileage of 407,739 units, almost double Toyota's total sales in Australia last year. This was more than 46,000 units ahead of the fifth-place Honda CR-V SUV.
The Toyota Camry was America's most popular sedan in 2021, ranking sixth with 313,795 sales. The rest of the top ten included the Nissan Rogue (X-Trail in Australia) in seventh place, the Jeep Grand Cherokee in eighth, the Toyota Highlander (Kluger in Australia) in ninth and the new generation Honda Civic in 10th.
U.S. electric vehicle sales peaked last year, with the most popular electric vehicle being the Tesla Model Y with sales of 161,527 units, enough for 20th place in general.
