Second-quarter truck sales results are in, and the Ford F-Series is still king of the mountain, but Ram is catching up.
And things still aren’t looking good for GM.
Last month, we reported that GM had decided to cede share of the lucrative full-size pickup market to focus more on profits. That strategy seemed questionable in light of Fiat Chrysler eating their lunch with sales of their popular Ram pickups.
GM’s pickup trucks are now in third and fourth place behind the perennial favorite Ford F-Series and the Ram 1500 and HD pickups. GM can claim to be in second place overall with combined sales of the Sierra and Silverado, but only just.
Meanwhile, FCA’s Ram is starting to actually catch up to Ford’s F-Series. According to Bloomberg, Ram’s June sales were only 3,400 units behind the average number of shipped F-150s for the first 4 months of 2019, which was 71,500 trucks.
Bloomberg gives the Ram high marks for selling both the redesigned 2019 Ram 1500 and the Ram Classic, a barebones version of the previous-gen Ram 1500. In addition, Ram offered steep discounts on the Ram Classic for June that actually took a percentage off the sticker price rather than an absolute value.
Their strategy seems to be to sacrifice profits now in favor of brand loyalty later--a risky proposition given the current attitude of truck buyers to hold no allegiances.
On the other hand, overall truck sales were down for the second quarter of 2019, but FCA’s total sales actually grew by 1.9% helped in no small part by their pickups.
Motor1 reports some grim statistics for the Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra. Silverado HD sales were down 15.9% for the second quarter, while Silverado 1500 sales were down close to 7%. GMC Sierra 1500 sales were a little better, only down 4.7%, with HD sales down 2.9%.
Overall Ford F-Series sales are down 1.3% from the previous quarter, but that means they still sold 448,398 trucks so far this year. That’s almost 150,000 more than Ram and almost 200,000 more than Chevrolet.