Is Chevrolet Attacking Ford's Aluminum Because Silverado Sales Are Flat And The F-Series Is Surging?

After watching General Motors drop 825 pounds of rock into the beds of a Chevrolet Silverado and a Ford F-150, I wasn’t caught up in fairness or relevance or with the advertisement’s status as a marketing stunt. Some observers asked whether GM crossed an unwritten line shared by Detroit’s cross-town truck rivals, as if in a year when presidential candidates toss deeply personal insults around like water balloons at a summer picnic a pickup truck critique would be over the line.

To me, it simply seemed clear from the moment of the ad’s YouTube launch that the Chevrolet Silverado’s apparent toughness advantage would be more frequently viewed than a traditional truck commercial. As of this writing, Chevrolet’s YouTube channel has racked up 4.4 million views with “Silverado Strong: Steel Bed Outperforms Aluminum Bed,” ten times more views than the channel’s 22 previous ads have generated in the last month, combined.

The Silverado could use the increased attention. U.S. sales of GM’s best-selling model line are flat despite a six-percent sales increase in the truck market so far this year.

GM could also stand to see the Ford F-Series taken down a peg. F-Series sales are growing faster than the sector as a whole.

In calendar year 2015, GM’s full-size pickup twins — Silverado and Sierra — combined to outsell the Ford F-Series lineup for the first time since 2009. But the Ford family was picking up steam after sliding 2 percent through the first-half of the year, a boom period for pickup truck sales. Second-half F-Series volume jumped 12 percent, and the F-Series hasn’t looked back since. Through the first five months of 2016, year-over-year F-Series volume is up 7 percent in a full-size pickup truck market that’s grown only 4 percent.

U.S. sales of the Chevrolet Silverado, meanwhile, rose to an eight-year high in calendar year 2015, climbing by 71,000 units compared with 2014. In early 2016, however, while U.S. new vehicle sales volume is rising steadily and the truck market appears very healthy, Silverado sales growth has stalled.

GM, fortunately, has seen a noticeable uptick in sales of the GMC Sierra, which has helped the twins to a 2-percent increase despite the Silverado’s slight downturn. But after outselling the F-Series by roughly 5,000 units in the first five months of 2015, the GM full-size twins trail the F-Series by 11,000 sales during the same period one year later.

The fickle U.S. sales race, fraught with all-encompassing figures that group lower-volume heavy-duty trucks with their light-duty brethren, isn’t the be all and end all of an automaker’s daily operations. But it’s reasonable to believe that General Motors, after making such headway last year when the F-150 was an all-new model, wants to take the resurgent Blue Oval down a peg in 2016. In so doing, if the soft glow of rugged, durable toughness casts a positive light on the Silverado’s bowtie grille, so be it.

From a strict sales perspective, the Honda Ridgeline’s subsequent performance — far less staged and consequently more believable — won’t result in hundreds of thousands of truck buyers shifting their allegiance to Honda. But the battles being waged are not at all dissimilar.

Chevrolet is determined to make the Silverado appear as the tougher full-size pickup truck. Honda must convince truck buyers that the Ridgeline is tough. Perhaps the er can come later.