American vehicle sales slumped in July, falling for a fifth consecutive month and failing to reach the magical ten million mark as it did this time last year. However, alert readers would be wise to recall that last year’s sales numbers were higher than at any point in the last twenty years.
Ford trucks continue to crush competitors like beetles under foot, moving 69,467 F-Series in the month of July. That works out to one F-Series being sold roughly every forty seconds, around the clock, seven days a week. So far this year, Ford has found 499,327 F-Series buyers, an 8.3% increase year-to-date over 2016.
The only full-size nameplates reporting a drop in sales were the GM twins: Sierra and Silverado. The GMC is off 7.6% so far this year, selling 19,963 trucks last month for a year-to-date total of 119,116. Chevy’s numbers are down even more sharply, recording 45,966 sales in July 2017 and 308,906 units year-to-date. Those are drops of 15.1% month-over-month and 5.8% year-over-year.
At Ram, 39,708 pickups vacated lots across America, bringing this year’s total to 290,151, a 6% increase. Counting the two varieties of ProMaster Van, Ram as a whole is up 6.5% from 2016.
READ MORE: 2017 Ram, Jeep EcoDiesels are Back on Sale
With sales of the newly introduced Single Cab supplementing the Crew Cab models, Nissan sold 3791 Titans last month, for a total of 28,255 XD and non-XD Titans so far in the 2017 calendar year. Those are very large year-over-year increases. They’ve also managed to shuffle off 45,460 compact Frontiers in 2017, about seven thousand fewer than this point in time one year ago.
At the other Japanese brand, Toyota moved 10,546 full-sized Tundra pickups in July, with total sales to this date in 2017 reaching 64,198 units. That’s a small year-over-year decrease, with Toyota moving about 1,000 more Tundras by this point last year, though Tundra’s July 2017 sales are higher than the truck’s July 2016 sales by about 100 trucks.
If the Titan continues its upward trajectory and Tundra stays at its current rate of sale, there’s a very real possibility that Toyota will only outsell Nissan in the full-size truck game by a ratio of 2:1, compared to 9:1 last year. Of course, the Titan is technically available in two flavors – XD and non-XD – while the Tundra is but one model. Toyota also moved 17,372 Tacos in July, on pace to sell about an equal amount as they did in 2016.
Jeep
The Jeep brand saw sales of 69,351 units for July 2017, raising year-to-date sales to 475,642. Earlier this year, loud noises were being made by speculators musing of Jeep’s ability to sell a million vehicles this year, given their total of 926,376 in 2016. Given this year’s current pace, we don’t think that’ll happen.
Looking at specific models, FCA sales staff moved 11,818 Cherokees and 19,024 Grand Cherokees in July. The company also sold 18,698 Wranglers, 7528 redesigned Compasses, and 3425 newly-discontinued Patriots. The Renegade found 8858 new homes.