Chart Of The Day: Full-Size Truck Wars, 1995-2010
Having inadvertently caused confusion over GM and Ford’s full-sized pickup rivalry, and in the spirit of t he reinvigorated cross-town battles between Ford and GM, I thought I’d share the longer view on the full-size pickup wars since 1995. Now, this graph is far from perfect, as GM’s Chevy Avalanche, Escalade EXT and HUMMER trucks (not to mention the Japanese also-rans) were a bridge too far for our underpowered graphing software (although, with Avalanche added, the GM total came within about 8k units of F-Series last year). Meanwhile, a real drilldown of full-sized truck data would include SUV derivatives as well as either historical data for GM’s “medium duty” trucks or a breakdown of F-Series by size. We could make excuses for why those factors weren’t included on this chart, but the omission will inevitably be blamed on bias, so why bother?
Either way, it’s easy to see why tensions are high between Ford and GM truck fans… having traded places several times over the last 15 years, the pickup wars are as tight as they could be.
More by Edward Niedermeyer
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The full size truck battle between GM and Ford is very close. Ford edged ahead of GM in the first quarter of '11: Ford=126,627; GM=126,400. As GM backed off incentives in March and Ford increased them, F-150 sales surged from about 36,000 in Jan and 38,000 in Feb to 53,000 in March! Avalanche and Escalade EXT are considered SUV's as opposed to pickups, though they sure look like 4 door trucks to me! An amazing fact that the data discloses is that trucks still outsold cars 52% to 48% for the first quarter in the U.S. despite gas prices approaching $4 again.
Sounds logical that GM would sell just as many Chevys as they do Chevys and GMC's combined if they were to consolidate the brands, but the data says otherwise. They're still trying to replace the sales they lost when they dropped Oldsmobile, and it's probably the same with Pontiac. Sure, it costs more to market and differentiate two brands as opposed to one, but these have been established over several decades and still have loyal fan bases. As long as the sales stay ahead of the costs, there's no reason to change. Dodger and Giant fans didn't become Yankee fans when their teams left New York, and some didn't even adopt the Mets. I will continue to argue that GM was at its most effective when its divisions acted like separate car companies rather than set their product line up as different trim levels of Chevy. Chrysler might be better off if it marketed Sebrings and PT Cruisers as Plymouths. And Ford may yet pay the price for axing Mercury.
Ford seems to have weathered the "loss" of Mercury just fine. Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Saturn's product were much more differentiated from Chevrolets than the GMC trucks are. I think Chevy:GMC is more like Ford:Mercury than it is like Chevy:Pontiac.
I wonder if $5+/gal gas will push the US toward the mix of trucks sold in the other 99% of the world? These Tonka style trucks seem mainly about fashion, and in any other market a $40k truck with a puny 900 kg payload capacity would raise mostly laughter, that's lower than the cute little Dyna. Anyone looking to do real work and not make a Paris Hilton style fashion statement would buy a cab forward with 4-7k kg max payload... and let their children pretend to be Walker Texas Ranger.