In virus-clobbered sales, Toyota beat Jeep in SUVs, Gladiator beat Frontier, and more
Sales figures for the first quarter of 2020 are out, and it’s not pretty, largely due to the coronavirus—as well as the air being let out of America’s economic bubble. Between closed dealerships and a stock market suddenly plunging to more realistic levels, wiping out a couple of years of fast gains, car sales plummeted in March—and that was to be expected; China saw car sales fall by more than 80% as it locked itself down.
The mighty General Motors continued to be America’s favorite automaker, selling 298,291 vehicles in the first quarter; #2 was Toyota, far below at 227,949. Toyota fared relatively well from the virus, due partly to its increasingly “all-new” car lineup on a well-done shared platform/architecture, and due partly to heavy built-in subsidies—not cash on the hood, but lots of free safety and convenience gear.
FCA US actually managed to be America’s #3, at 202,564—easily beating Ford’s 189,720 sales, albeit with six brands (four of which had reasonable sales) against Ford’s two. The king of big pickups was, for the first time in a long time, GM, with 197,743 pickups sold to Ford’s 186,562 sales (that’s 144,734 Chevys and 53,009 GMCs). Ram came in #3, at 128,805, with the old DS “Classic” and the new DT not broken out.
Toyota still dominates midsize pickups, with 53,636 sold; that’s just a few more than the GMC Sierra. The next best midsize pickups were the Chevy Colorado (21,430) and Ford Ranger (20,980), with Jeep lagging at 15,259. The Tundra full size pickup came in at just 21,658, still enough to be double the Frontier’s sales; the Ridgeline and Titan were below 10,000 sales. The Gladiator did well given its price. The Ranger is likely to double sales, when dealerships open again, since it’s still pretty new.
Ford saw car sales fall yet again, and ended up getting 40% of its sales from pickups. That’s well ahead of GM’s 36% or FCA US’ 32%. Ford did clobber other muscle/pony cars, selling 18,069 Mustangs to 12,138 Challengers and 7,185 Camaros.
U.S. light vehicle sales fell by 13% for the quarter, dropping from 3.8 million to 3.3 million. Nearly all the drop was in sedans.
Overall, crossovers/SUVs made up literally half the market, and gained by 1.2% during the quarter; passenger cars are next, with just one quarter of the market, having fallen another 4%. Pickups are a fifth of the market, and went up by 3%. Commercial vans, just 3% of the market, gained by 0.1%, nearly all Transits, while minivans fell to 2.5%, down 0.3%—nearly all FCA built. All vans but Transits and Nissan NV200s fell, and the Transit outsold the Nissan by roughly 8:1.
Speaking of traditional passenger cars—sedans, coupes, and “non-lifted” wagons—Toyota truly dominated the field, selling 20% of the traditional cars in the US for the quarter, with just eight nameplates (three of which, the 86, Supra, and Mirai, are true niche players); that doesn’t even include Lexus. All of GM combined ended up at around 10%; Ford was good for 7% and Dodge for 4%. Honda was closest to Toyota, at 15%; Hyundai/Kia hit 14% together with Genesis.
How did Toyota do it? Largely with two cars, the Camry and Corolla, selling 77,188 and 69,214 for the quarter, the #1 and #2 spots. The #3 Civic came close with 63,944 sales, but after that the numbers dropped to 47,347 (Altima). The Americans didn’t come in until #6 and #7 with the Fusion and Malibu (36,937 and 35,283); Dodge didn’t show up until the Charger at 18,628. The Mustang was next on the list, followed by the Challenger, which tells you something about the popularity of American sedans and coupes (namely, they aren’t very popular, even if Dodge did once again have the best-selling full-size sedan).
In fairness to the American buyer, the Camry, Corolla, Civic, and Accord are all brand new, from the ground up (except for their engines), and even the list price is heavily discounted given the feature lists. To compete with that would be very hard for the American brands. Expect Toyota and Honda to grab more market share from the Big Three as the recession continues, because buyers value quality in hard times, and while GM has dramatically improved their reliability, their reputation lags reality. Fiat Chrysler might be hurt the most, but Ford’s reliance on pickups may come back to haunt them if the fracking-coal-and-shale bailouts aren’t big enough.
In retrospect, 2020 was a bad time to go to quarterly sales figures.
Credit to Bill Cawthon for making the figures easy to use.
Clark Westfield grew up fixing up and driving past-their-prime American cars, including various GM and Mopar V8s. He has ghostwritten auto news for the last few years, and lives in Farmingdale, New York.
