Most trucks finished 2017 very strongly, with high December sales pushing their yearly totals above their 2016 accomplishments.
Leading the pack is the Ford F-Series, which sold 89,385 trucks in December and for the entire year of 2017, the Blue Oval moved 896,764 pickups. This works out to Ford selling a F-Series truck about once every 35 seconds, around the clock, during each day last year.
Combined, the Chevy & GMC duo of Silverado and Sierra sold about 100,000 units less than the F-Series, with the bowtie brand seeing 585,864 full-sized pickups move off their showroom floor. The Sierra actually sold about 4000 units less in 2017 than it did a year prior.
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Ram, for its part, saw sales jump to over half a million trucks in the entirety of 2017, up from about 489,000 in 2016. This could be due to financial reasons, such as the presence of hefty incentives and cash on the hood, or it could be due to the Ram faithful stocking up on trucks before the new Ram with its seemingly less aggro style drops in Detroit later this month.
The Japanese brotherhood of Tacoma and Tundra were largely flat in sales performance last year, as the mid-sizer found 198,124 customers to sign on the dotted line while its big brother enjoyed attention from 116,285 new owners. That the old-as-Methuselah Tundra sold only about a hundred thousand fewer copies annually than the Sierra was no small feat, so well done Toyota.
Seemingly perpetually in fifth place in the full-size market is the Nissan Titan, selling 52,924 examples during its first calendar year as its new iteration. Undoubtedly, there were a few old-style Titans kicking around on dealer lots at the beginning of 2017, so that number is a bit of a mixture of old- and new-design trucks. Surely this number will increase in 2018 given the myriad of configurations of the new Titan now available to consumers. It’s old-enough-to-vote little brother, the Frontier, was down 3% in December and down about 14% on the year.
GM’s mid-size team of Canyon and Colorado added 32,106 and 112,996 trucks to The General’s bottom line last year. That number is up about four thousand for the Chevy and down about five thousand for the GMC compared to their 2016 performance. Why the Canyon, a capable truck that looks tough and is offered with a legion of amenities, continues to sell at the approximate rate of glacier progression is one of this world’s greatest mysteries.
The unibodied Honda Ridgeline finished the year poorly, dropping by about 30% volume in December to 2854 units sold. Considering the entire year, however, it did much better than 2016, increasing its sales by nearly 50% to 34,749. That’s two thousand more than the Canyon, by the way.