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.

  • Lorenzo Heh. The major powers, military or economic, set up these regulators for the smaller countries - the big guys do what they want, and always have. Are the Chinese that unaware?
  • Lorenzo The original 4-Runner, by its very name, promised something different in the future. What happened?
  • Lorenzo At my age, excitement is dangerous. one thing to note: the older models being displayed are more stylish than their current versions, and the old Subaru Forester looks more utilitarian than the current version. I thought the annual model change was dead.
  • Lorenzo Well, it was never an off-roader, much less a military vehicle, so let the people with too much money play make believe.
  • EBFlex The best gift would have been a huge bonfire of all the fak mustangs in inventory and shutting down the factory that makes them.Heck, nobody would even have to risk life and limb starting the fire, just park em close together and wait for the super environmentally friendly EV fire to commence.
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