The Chevy Silverado is still losing ground to the Ram 1500 and Ford F-150.
Since last year, the Chevrolet Silverado has dipped to third place in the war for full-size pickup supremacy. The Ram 1500 now enjoys a comfortable lead over the Silverado as the second best-selling pickup in America, while the perennial Ford F-150 continues to lead the pack, although that lead is also shrinking.
Now, a new report from Automotive News confirms that the Silverado remains firmly entrenched as the third best-selling pickup, having been beaten by Ram for sales in 9 of the past 10 months.
The redesigned 2019 Silverado hit dealerships last year, and while that gave a boost to the Silverado’s sales, it wasn’t enough to catch up to the Ram 1500. According to data obtained from the Automotive News Data Center and confirmed by GM’s sales ledgers, the Ram 1500 holds a lead of just under 22,000 units sold for the first 5 months of 2019. General Motors’ share of the full-size pickup market has dropped by 3%, which includes the Silverado’s sister truck, the GMC Sierra.
GM is still second place as a manufacturer if you include the Sierra, but only just.
Executives within GM say that they’re not paying attention to market share in the lucrative full-size pickup market at the moment, and instead are focusing on profits. GM President of the Americas Barry Engle says that the Silverados troubles are temporary and will be fixed after recently announced improvements to production capacity have been completed.
"Given our limited availability, we deliberately launched with a really high mix in trims," Engle told Automotive News. "But as we get broader availability and get the full portfolio out there, we'll be just fine."
Engle also said that the Trail Boss off-road trim will grow to over 20% of the Silverado’s total production thanks to its incredible popularity. "We're selling every one of those we can make, and the real demand for that thing is probably double what we thought it would be and what we capacitized at," he said. "The dealers are just screaming for more."