In the battle of midsize pickup sales, it’s the consumer who is the real winner.
The Toyota Tacoma continued to lead midsize truck sales charts with a year-over-year gain of 3.4 percent compared to November 2014, with yearly totals up more than 15 percent from last year.
GM’s new midsize trucks, the Chevrolet Colorado and the GMC Canyon, are also enjoying strong sales, although their percentage increases are a bit exaggerated as the models were new last year and production was still ramping up.
Sandwiched between the GM twins is the Nissan Frontier, which saw a nearly 20 percent drop in sales from November 2014, but curiously was the only truck of the four to post a month-over-month increase.
The big news for this segment, though, is that both the Tacoma and the GM trucks have been huge successes, meaning that there is still a market for something smaller than a full size truck.
In fact, the only thing keeping these trucks from selling more is production capacity. According to a Torque News report, Toyota added a third shift to their Texas factory late last year in anticipation of increased sales, which bumped capacity by 30 percent. Automotive News reported that GM is wringing all the production capacity it can from its Wentzville, Missouri plant.
Hopefully this will spur other companies to throw their midsize truck hats into the ring. Ford has an all-new Ranger that is sold seemingly everywhere else but here and Honda is gearing up for a brand-new Ridgeline.
In the end, everyone wins.
November 2015 Midsize Truck Sales
| Nov 2015 # | Oct 2015 # | Oct ’15/Nov ’15 % | Nov ’15/’14 % | YTD 2015 # | YTD ’15/’14 % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Toyota Tacoma | 13,465 | 15,233 | -11.6% | 3.4% | 162,370 | 15.4% |
| Chevrolet Colorado | 6,230 | 7,059 | -11.7% | 163.3% | 76,521 | 1,829.0% |
| Nissan Frontier | 5,099 | 4,764 | 7.0% | -19.5% | 57,124 | -16.3% |
| GMC Canyon | 2,236 | 2,415 | -7.4% | 161.8% | 27,077 | 1,662.0% |
Check out this TFLtruck off-road video of the 2015 Nissan Frontier, the often forgotten midsize truck:
