On Track For Best Year Ever, Ram Beats Chevrolet Silverado In September 2016

For just the second time in 205 months, the Ram P/U range outsold the Chevrolet Silverado in the United States in September 2016.

It’s a victory wiped away by including GM’s other full-size pickup truck, the GMC Sierra, not to mention both Ram and Silverado are fighting for second place. The Ford F-Series is America’s top-selling truck line, outselling the Ram by 20,000 units and the GM twins by nearly 4,400 sales.

September was nevertheless the icing on the cake for a three-quarter period in which Ram’s pickups finished 27,549 sales ahead of their record-setting pace last year.

But Fiat Chrysler Automobiles placed a lot of extra cash on the hood to put so much icing on the cake.

During a month in which even sales at the Jeep brand decreased and total non-pickup sales at FCA fell 8 percent, a Ram P/U increase was vital.

Heading into September, FCA had a 102-day supply of pickup trucks. To aid inventory glut reduction, the average Ram P/U incentive rose approximately $1,100 from $6,000/per truck in August to $7,100 in September, discounts worth nearly $2,000 more per truck than Ford applied to the F-Series.

(F-Series incentives reportedly remained level from August to September; the Silverado’s average per-truck incentive grew from $4,700 to $5,650.)

Naturally, the precise amount would vary depending on the specific truck. Like its key Detroit competitors, Ram’s pickup line is vast, ranging from light-duty 1500s with Pentastar V6 engines to heavy-duty models with dual rear wheels and Cummins diesels, trucks laden with leather, enough electronic doodads to embarrass many so-called luxury sedans, and thick profit margins.

However deep the price cut, it worked. Ram P/U sales jumped 29 percent to 47,792 units, topping the Silverado — for the first time since March 2014 — by 2,412 sales.

U.S. sales of full-size pickups grew by just 1 percent in September, as Ram’s competition collectively lost 6 percent of their sales.

As a result, Ram’s share of the full-size pickup truck market grew from 20 percent in September 2015 (and 21 percent in August 2016, when Ram incentives were already greater than GM’s or Ford’s) to 25 percent in September 2016.

General Motors remains the top-selling manufacturer of pickup trucks overall in 2016. Through the first three-quarters of this year, GM’s pickup sales are up 1 to 697,249, boosted by a 25-percent surge in sales of the company’s midsize twins.

After outselling the Ford F-Series with its full-size twins in calendar year 2015, ending a five-year streak, the F-Series leads the Silverado/Sierra by 5,660 units heading into the Q4.

Timothy Cain is the founder of GoodCarBadCar.net, which obsesses over the free and frequent publication of U.S. and Canadian auto sales figures. Follow on Twitter @goodcarbadcar and on Facebook.