You Know Truck Sales Are Strong When Even Nissan Is Doing Well

America’s pickup truck market exploded with significant year-over-year growth in November 2016. After the U.S. auto industry reported three consecutive months of decline through the end of October, auto sales jumped 4 percent in November, year-over-year.

Pickup trucks were responsible for half of the industry’s growth last month.

All 11 truck nameplates on offer in the United States — from the Chevrolet Silverado that posted a modest 0.6-percent uptick to the Honda Ridgeline that shot up 115,367 percent — got in on the action.

Even the Nissan Titan.

For the Titan, November’s 3,329 sales positioned the truck 11th in an 11-truck sector, but it still experienced a 363-percent improvement compared with November of last year.

With the regular-duty Titan now available, in addition to the medium-duty XD that barely moved the needle, Titan sales have now increased in three consecutive months after volume plunged to an all-time low in 2015 and fell flat in the early part of 2016.

Upon the truck’s introduction 13 years ago, Nissan reported 83,848 U.S. Titan sales in its first full year, 2004. 2005 sales increased 4 percent, but then Titan volume declined in nine of the next ten years.

By 2014, Titan volume was down an astonishing 86 percent from its peak a decade earlier.

Now the Titan is on its way back. Very slowly.

If November’s pace could be sustained over the course of a year, Nissan would sell 40,000 full-size pickups in a twelve-month period, less than half of what the company achieved in 2005.

Nevertheless, November 2016’s Titan result was its best since August 2008, a 99-month high.

In the grand scheme of the full-size pickup truck market, the Nissan Titan is scarcely a blip on the radar. Full-size pickup truck sales jumped 9 percent, year-over-year, in November and are up 3-percent year-to-date.

Only 2 percent of the full-size pickup trucks sold in the United States last month were Titans; fewer than 1 percent of the full-sizers sold this year have been Titans.

With the F-Series, Ford owns a GM-beating 36 percent of the full-size pickup truck in 2016. Last year, the full-size GM twins — Silverado and Sierra — combined to outsell the F-Series for the first time since 2009.

So far this year, sales of the GM duo are down 2 percent to 718,994 total sales, 14,293 behind the F-Series. In November, the Silverado and Sierra rose 4 percent with help from huge price cuts. GM’s average per-truck incentive rose 46 percent compared with November 2015 to $5,753, according to J.D. Power PIN data.

In order for Ram to produce an 8-percent surge to 36,885 November sales, incentives rose to an average of $6,062 per truck. Ram owns 22 percent of the full-size pickup truck market in the U.S. in 2016, up a percentage point from 2015. Ford incentivized its full-size trucks to the tune of $4,467 per truck in November and claimed 39 percent of the segment.

GM, of course, benefits from its entrance into a separate segment forsaken by Ford and Ram. The Colorado and Canyon twins owned one-third of the midsize truck category in November, slightly less than one-third year-to-date.

The Toyota Tacoma remains the predominant midsize truck in America, claiming 43 percent of the segment in 2016’s first 11 months and in November. Tacoma volume jumped 15 percent last month in a segment that surged 34 percent because of the GM gains and the Honda Ridgeline’s addition. Honda reported 3,464 total Ridgeline sales in November, ninth among pickup trucks overall.

Through the end of November, 17 percent of the pickups sold in America were Tacomas, Colorados, Canyons, Ridgelines, and Frontiers, the latter being the wildly more common of Nissan’s two pickup trucks.

Frontier volume was up by one-tenth of one percentage point in November, as growth has slowed now that Nissan isn’t pushing every available pickup truck buyer to the smaller truck. 2016 will be the best year for Frontier sales since 2001.

There’s nevertheless plenty of room for improvement at Nissan’s truck division. Fewer than 4 percent of the pickup trucks sold in America in November were Frontiers and Titans.

Nissan owned 5.2 percent of America’s truck market in 2006.

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.