Toyota Camry: Can It Beat the Ford F-150?

After years as the best-selling vehicle in the U.S., the F-150—and other pickups—will soon cede top spots to cars like the Toyota Camry

by Jim Henry

Ford

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Could the Toyota Camry become the best-selling vehicle in the U.S.? It could happen, if sales keep falling for large pickups, and cars keep climbing up the list of Top 10-selling vehicles.

The Camry is already the No. 1-selling car in the U.S. market and has been for 10 of the past 11 years. The one exception was Honda's (HMC) Accord in 2001, according to Automotive News. But for all that time, full-size pickups from General Motors (GM), Chrysler, and Ford (F) outsold the Camry and every other car by such a wide margin, it seemed that pickups could never be knocked from their perch.

Above it all, the Ford F-150 and its ancestors have been the best-selling vehicles in the U.S. for 26 years in a row, and the best-selling truck for 31 years in a row, according to George Pipas, Ford's U.S. sales analysis manager.

Closing the Gap

But as the big domestic pickups have fallen and Camry sales have slowly improved, the Camry has been closing the gap. For the month of April, the Camry outsold the perennial No. 2 overall, the Chevrolet Silverado, something that's never happened for a full year. The Camry has outsold the Dodge Ram pickup since 2006, at first by only a few hundred units in a full year, but this year by more than 50,000 after only four months.

Nobody until recently thought Toyota Motor (TM) would outsell General Motors worldwide, either, yet that happened last year.

In the U.S. market, gas prices, the housing meltdown, and changing consumer tastes have all combined to drag down sales of large pickups. The same high gas prices have made fuel-efficient cars more attractive, especially gasoline-electric hybrids like the Toyota Camry Hybrid. The hybrid model accounts for the entire 2008 improvement in Camry sales overall. The all-hybrid Toyota Prius isn't in the overall Top 10 yet, but it's knocking on the door, and it was a Top 10-selling car last year. On May 15, Toyota reported for the first time that it had sold more than 1 million Priuses.

As recently as 2004, the year gas prices started to spike, Ford sold more than 900,000 units of the F-Series pickup, outselling the Camry by more than 2-to-1. In 2008 the F-150 continues to outsell the Camry, but only by about 30% through April. That's still a lot, but if the present trend continues and the F-150 stays in free fall, those lines cross within the next couple of years, and the Camry will outsell the F-150.