Toyota sold twice as many trucks than Ford.
Due to the outbreak of coronavirus, 2020 was a difficult year for the auto industry. Although most automakers saw their sales suffer, the impact has been unevenly distributed. You only need to look at midsize pickups. Some saw models lose single-digits while others suffered a decline. The Toyota Tacoma, which sold 238,806 pickups, was the closest truck to the midsize king.
The Ford Ranger was second in sales with a 13.3 percent increase over 2019, as it completed its second year of full-time sale. The Blue Oval sold 101 486 pickups, which is less than half of the Tacoma’s. General Motors actually outperformed Ford with the Chevy Colorado, GMC Canyon pickups. The combined sales volume of these two trucks was 121 428 trucks. The Chevy sales dropped 21.3 percent to 95,238 and the GMC sales fell 23.3 percent at 25,190. This puts Chevy in third place, while GMC is last. This is less trucks than the Honda Ridgeline which saw a slight drop of 3.5 percent to 32,168 sales.
The Jeep Gladiator saw its sales increase by 94 percent from 40,047 units sold in 2019 to 77.542 in 2020. The Gladiator saw a slow start to sales, with trucks starting to leave dealer lots in large numbers in Summer 2019. Nissan was on the other side of the spectrum, with Frontier sales dropping by almost 50 percent. The sales fell to 36,845 in 2019, from 72,369 in 2019. The Frontier was refreshed by Nissan for 2020, but it did not do much to modernize the truck. The next-generation Frontier is currently in development. This could have affected sales while customers wait for the pickup.
Automakers were certainly hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, which saw sales drop for most brands. Sales of the three most iconic American muscle cars fell, with the Dodge Challenger coming in second to the Chevy Camaro and the Ford Mustang behind. Automakers should expect 2021 to be a better year.