Sales in the Large Pickup segment grew by 4.3% in the second quarter of 2017, a slight slowdown relative to the the first quarter, but still enough to register a YTD sales rate of 4.9% – much better than the falling market total. In fact, there is a trend emerging in 2017, wherein pickups seem to be regaining what little ground they lost to commercial vans in recent years (at least those pickups that are used for commercial purposes) – both pickup segments grew so far this year, while the commercial vans segment lost volume. This steady growth trend is likely to continue in 2017, but the arrival of the new RAM Pickup towards the end of the year may result in a quickening of the growth rate in 2018, given how popular the model has been in recent years.
Highlights for first half of 2017:
Nissan Titan- Even though this segment is usually pretty uneventful, there have been plenty of interesting developments of late – for starters, after a so-so 2016 Ford F-series has been gaining sales at a nice rate, almost reaching 9% so far this year
- It is the opposite story for Chevrolet Silverado, which lost almost 4% in sales so far in 2017, and instead of closing the (huge) gap to the F-series it instead is falling back into the clutches of the 3rd-placed RAM Pickup, which outsold it on a few occasions this year, and has closed to within 12k units on a growth rate of 8.2% – it will be interesting to see which one of these two comes out on top by the end of the year
- The Chevy’s twin GMC Sierra fared even worse, losing 6.9% in sales
- The new Nissan Titan continues doing better and better, with its Q2 growth outpacing even that in Q1, though it still sold less than half of what the second-to-last model, Toyota Tundra, sold YTD
Note: Clicking on the model name opens the sales data page for that model; clicking year in the legend turns the display for that year on/off