Domestic Truck Wars: No One Wants to Finish Last in Detroit

There’s a chill in the auto industry that wasn’t present a year ago. Sales are down compared to this time last year, with only a select few automakers posting year-to-date gains. Among members of the Detroit Three, volume loss is the order of the day.

Over the first three months of 2019, Ford sales sank 1.6 percent, General Motors sales declined 7 percent, and Fiat Chrysler volume dropped 3 percent. While the long-predicted slowdown is upon us, rivalry in the lucrative full-size pickup segment has never been hotter — and the battle for second place among the top three truck nameplates shows no signs of ending.

Naturally, Ford’s F-Series line took the volume crown, just as it has for decades, with sales up 0.2 percent through the end of March. Ford boasts that F-Series incentive spending was the lowest in the segment.

Chevrolet claims it’s standing firm on its spending, avoiding the urge to boost sales with a hood-denting cash dump. Unfortunately for Chevy, sales of the Silverado line are down 15.7 percent, year to date, despite the automaker keeping the old Silverado 1500 (now with an “LD” suffix) on the market to bolster volume and offer buyers a lower entry price. The next-generation 1500 dropped late last year, with the controversially designed 2020 Heavy Duty launching this summer.

As for Ram, the continued production of the old 1500 (“Classic”) and new-for-2019 model worked wonders for volume, with the brand up 15 percent, year to date. March sales rose 9 percent.

Ram now has a growing lead over Chevrolet in the full-size truck race, recording 120,026 sales in the first quarter of 2019 to Chevy’s 114,313. In the last quarter of 2018, Silverado edged out Ram by just 226 units.

While a botched launch of the 2019 Ram 1500 proved beneficial to Chevy, which finished 2018 ahead of Ram, leads don’t always last. Compare Q1 2019’s results to the same quarter a year ago, when the Silverado nameplate garnered 135,545 buyers to the Ram line’s 103,964.

GM points to FCA’s generous sales incentives as the reason for its rival’s second-place position, though some question whether the General will have to follow suit. Even if it’s willing to let Ram take the silver sales medal, falling sales are cause for concern.

“Chevrolet has been disciplined. But how long can they maintain discipline as they’re losing market share? They’ll have to respond in some way,” Autoline host John McElroy told the Detroit Free Press.

For Ford, safe in its first-place perch (it sold 214,611 F-Series trucks last quarter), the battle between GM and FCA is an amusing distraction. The Q1 volume bump, small though it may be, is no doubt music to Jim Hackett’s ears.

A next-generation F-150 will make an appearance later this year before going on sale as a 2020 model.

[Image: © 2019 Chris Tonn/TTAC, Ford, General Motors]