We’ve got your sales roundup right here.
In the post-holiday glow (or chaos, depending on your point of view) that is January, most truck makers reported a fairly robust month. We say “most” because two of the three Detroit-based companies on our list have gone dark; Ford has recently followed the decision of General Motors not to report its monthly sales activity.
We do know that Ford is basking in early demand for its Ranger, bragging its Wayne Assembly plant is running “massive overtime” to keep up with things. According to Kumar Galhotra, group vice president and president of Ford North America, the 2019 Ford Ranger is off to a dandy start after with about 1200 of the trucks sold in the first two weeks it has been on sale.
Fortunately, FCA still deems us worthy of information. The Ram brand as a whole increased its volume to report a record January as sales rose 24 percent. Specifically, pickup truck sales jumped 19 percent to 34,889 as dealers are now enjoying a steady flow of Ram 1500 trucks of all shapes and sizes into their showrooms. Now the company has its production issues figured out, expect the next several months to show year-over-year increases as well.
Despite extreme weather across the Midwest and Northeast – two key regions for Jeep – brand sales slipped only 2 percent to 58,401 vehicles. The Wrangler set a new record for January as its volume increased to 13,024 units, an 11 percent jump. Alert readers will note we’ve made room for the Gladiator on our chart in anticipation of its arrival later this year.
With the same number of selling days as last year, the tag team of Tacoma and Tundra provided a mixed bag of results for Toyota. The midsizer was roughly flat, gaining 140 units on last year’s performance, while its big brother was off by 485 examples. At this level of volume, that represents a 6.3 percent drop.
Demand for the new Titan has definitely levelled off, finding 3031 new homes last month. The Nissan pickup shed over 1000 units compared to this time last year when the truck was still a relative newcomer to the game. Dropping 1000 sales would be a rounding error for the F-150 but represents a murderous 25.2 percent drop at Nissan. The mid-sized Frontier continues to do well, with 6062 customers signing on the dotted line, a 2.7 percent increase.