Best Selling Car in America - United States Number One - Top Vehicles Sold

The best selling car in America remains the Ford F-Series pick up at the end of 2011. Interesting when you consider the bailouts of GM and Chrysler. Taking a look at thee best selling vehicles from the April 2010 U.S. auto sales we see little change today. The top five selling cars are (including trucks) were, number one the Ford F-Series pick up with 143,985 sales followed by the Honda Accord with 104,101 sales. To round off the top five are, the Chevy Silverado-C/K pick up, followed by the Toyota Camry and the Toyota Corolla. Nissan Motor Co Ltd sales were up 35 percent, the largest percentage gain.

Economists look for hints of an economic recovery from auto selling; marketers and trend followers alike watch these numbers. On the face of it the numbers were strong showing up 20 percent from a year earlier. They do suggest a stall given they were 8 percent lower in April from March. These results increasing are coming off a very low base and are padded with buyer incentives.

U.S. auto sales for April came out largely as expected by analysts. Total sales of the top 20 vehicles rose 22.8 percent or 257,500 units to 1,386,404. Though I need to caution they were off extremely low starting points all of the largest carmakers sales increased over a year earlier. Autodata Corp reported that seasonally adjusted annualized U.S. auto sales were about 11.2 million in April, down from 11.8 million in March. This is significantly above the April 2009 rate of 9.23 million. Don’t forget we had a little cash for clunkers program amongst all that.

In 2009 10.4 million vehicles were sold, the lowest since the early 1980s. Compare this to 17 million vehicles sold in 2005 in America. The fall was rapid, like everything in the global financial crisis, there were 16 million vehicles sold in 2007.

The 20 top-selling vehicles in the United States through April of 2010 per numbers from the automakers 

RANK VEHICLE  2010  2009  % Change

1 Ford F-Series P/U 143,985 110,336 +30.5

2 Honda Accord 104,101 84,491 +23.2

3 Chevy Silverado-C/K P/U 102,098 93,720 +8.9

4 Toyota Camry 96,509 92,523 +4.3

5 Toyota Corolla 91,672 78,132 +17.3

6 Honda Civic 78,669 76,782 +2.5

7 Nissan Altima 74,245 61,670 +20.4

8 Ford Fusion 70,382 46,799 +50.4

9 Chevrolet Malibu 65,875 50,265 +31.1

10 Ford Escape 64,237 44,626 +43.9

11 Ford Focus 57,704 41,747 +38.2

12 Toyota RAV4 55,325 39,457 +40.2

13 Chevrolet Impala 54,417 45,047 +20.8

14 Honda CR-V 53,009 50,647 +4.7

15 Dodge Ram P/U 51,707 64,522 -19.9

16 Chevrolet Cobalt 51,080 32,065 +59.3

17 Hyundai Sonata 50,283 37,472 +34.2

18 Chevrolet Equinox 42,366 17,354 +144.1

19 Toyota Prius 40,793 32,662 +24.9

20 Chrysler Town & Country 37,947 28,587 +32.7

*P/U = pick up

General Motors Co has held its position as the No. 1 motor vehicle seller in the United States. Number two is Ford and Toyota comes in third. GM saw sales rise an annualized 6.4 percent from the prior year. Nissan Motor had the largest percentage gain at 35 percent of the automakers, Hyundai Motor Co had a 30 percent and Ford Motor Co and Chrysler both had sales rise by 25 percent. 

Ford said it’s number one selling F-Series pickup truck sales rose 42 percent and it’s Ford Escape SUV sales rose 41 percent. 

GM Vice President of U.S. sales Steve Carlisle on a conference call said, 'Overall, the U.S. economic recovery would appear to be on track, however the pace isn't expected to be as robust as compared to other post-war recoveries -- kind of a slow and steady sort of scenario.'  That might have a bit to do with the nature of the bailouts and the poor industry nature of the economy Mr. Carlisle.

Toyota Motor Corp has been plagued by recalls. Once the doyen of world brands for reliability it has been hounded by negatives news and even had it’s credit rating cut this year. Though vehicle sales rose over 24 percent analysts expected better sales. Toyota has responded to its credibility crisis extending record company incentives to try and win back buyers.

Honda Motor seemed to benefit the most from Toyota’s demise. Honda reported a 12.5 percent increase in sales and importantly Honda incentives are $700 per vehicle less than Toyota's (Edmunds). Honda is the fourth largest car seller in America by vehicles sold. 

Korean automaker Hyundai was a standout setting a new sales record for April when the sales are coupled with its smaller affiliate Kia Motors. Hyundai took the number six spot off Nissan for U.S. auto sales. 

Though these US auto number results are heavily padded by incentives Edmunds said that Toyota trimmed incentives 9 percent from March, but April incentives were still up over 50 percent from the prior year.

IHS Global Insight analyst Aaron Bragman sums it up, 'Toyota continues to buy its market share.' Toyota America’s Bob Carter concurs in regards to discounts to, 'rebuild the brand to remove any cautions consumers have.' and 'We're going to do what it takes to keep ourselves competitive in an improving but challenging market,' Carter said.

Edmunds.com senior analyst Michelle Krebs said that Hyundai, Ford and GM all cut incentives’ and let their products sell themselves’. It remains to be seen whether the economy has legs and can boost the auto industry without incentives and also if the high gas prices will make a dent on the best selling car in America.