February Sales Snapshot: Truck Month Headed For A Letdown?

Edward Niedermeyer
by Edward Niedermeyer

If there are two words that can’t be left out of any discussion of 2010 auto sales numbers, they are “incentives” and “fleet.” With a fleet sales binge well underway, and Toyota recall-triggered incentive wars raging with no end in sight, the spring Truck month rituals have been bounteous. And with sales of full-sized trucks through February trending flat and fragmented, they had to be. But will they make a difference?

GMC and Chevy have seen the fizz go out of their full-sized sales, and are piling on the rebates, and finance deals to move the metal.

Note that the biggest spiffs are reserved for Sierra, which is off nearly six percent this year. And that’s compared to the apocalyptic 2009 numbers.

Chevy is even focusing its Toyota-poaching offers at truck and full-sized SUV buyers… and not Chevy’s main volume (i.e. Camry) competitor, the Malibu.

But the biggest incentives in Detroit come from Chrysler, whose Dodge (or not) Ram is down 26 percent on the year to date. In addition to matching GM and Ford’s zero-percent and cash-back offers, Ram has revived its mystifying “Free Hemi upgrade” incentive. Perhaps it helps Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne sleep at night, as it’s a less obvious way of “buying market share,” a practice he loudly derides in polite company.

But most mystifying of all of this year’s Truck Month incentive-fests, was Ford’s. F-series has been running away from the competition in terms of volume, and Ford’s fleet mix indicates that at least some truck profit has already been sacrificed. But with Toyota leaning hard on car sales with finance and cash deals, every last truck sale is that much more important.

Edward Niedermeyer
Edward Niedermeyer

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  • Moparman426W Moparman426W on Mar 22, 2010

    Crash.......I was not laughing at ford's tailgate step. I thought that it was stupid of chevy to make fun of a feature that they don't even have. Can't they come up with anything better than that for a commercial? As I get older the arthritis in my legs gets worse, making it harder for me to climb in and out of the bed of my trucks, and it mnakes me wish that dodge had that feature also!

    • Crash sled Crash sled on Mar 22, 2010

      M'man, the man-step is practically a necessity for many of us, I'd agree. I could barely swing my bones up into my F-150's bed, and my hunting dogs couldn't barely jump up into it, and they're olympic athletes. Howie is making fun of Ford, but Chevy is just as stupid in swelling up their rigs. But if you're going to push for 900,000 yearly sales, way beyond what a non-pushed market would likely accept, and sell to an aging population, with a truck jacked up to the moon, the man-steps are the kinds of pig lipstick that you have to build in. And now, truckageddon has chased off those fringe buyers. I bet Chevy/Ram/Ford are sorry now that they listened to all those square-glasses Design geeks who told them to put the exteriors of those vehicles on steriods. The people who NEED trucks and use them, don't like to have to get a stepladder to reach into the box. Those trucks are less usable, but they look real cool and tough in somebody's marketing material, I'm sure.

  • ToolGuy North America is already the greatest country on the planet, and I have learned to be careful about what I wish for in terms of making changes. I mean, if Greenland wants to buy JDM vehicles, isn't that for the Danes to decide?
  • ToolGuy Once again my home did not catch on fire and my fire extinguisher(s) stayed in the closet, unused. I guess I threw my money away on fire extinguishers.(And by fire extinguishers I mean nuclear missiles.)
  • Carson D The UAW has succeeded in organizing a US VW plant before. There's a reason they don't teach history in the schools any longer. People wouldn't make the same mistakes.
  • B-BodyBuick84 Mitsubishi Pajero Sport of course, a 7 seater, 2.4 turbo-diesel I4 BOF SUV with Super-Select 4WD, centre and rear locking diffs standard of course.
  • Corey Lewis Think how dated this 80s design was by 1995!
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