But Ford still says the F-Series is number one…
On January 5, Ford issued a press release along with its December and 2021 sales results proudly declaring its crown jewel, the F-Series, is the “best-selling truck for 45th year in row.” As many a professor of mine taught me way back when I was in college, you can twist numbers to tell whatever story you want. Ford is being pretty creative here, especially considering GM’s twin full-size truck lines outsold the F-Series for 2021.
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The truth can be a cold slap in the face when you’ve constructed a house of half-truths, so I don’t expect Ford to be too pleased with this reality. However, the cold, hard numbers don’t lie. Per Ford, it delivered 726,004 F-Series trucks to customers for 2021. Sadly, that was down from the 787,422 in 2020. Surely the chip shortage played a role in that 7.8 percent decrease in sales, which is unfortunate.
Meanwhile, GM says the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra LD and HD sales hit 768,689 for 2021. While that number wouldn’t have been enough to unseat the F-Series from its lofty throne in 2020, it was enough to knock it off for 2021. However, Ford’s going to keep pretending nothing happened, hoping nobody will give GM’s assertion it was number one in full-size truck sales any credence.
Here’s the game Ford has played before and probably will play now: since F-Series is all under the Ford badge and not Ford and Lincoln, GM can’t combine sales from Chevrolet and GMC even though the Silverado and Sierra are pretty much the same truck at their core. That’s really splitting hairs, but welcome to how automakers spin the truth to their favor.
Since we don’t get press pool vehicles, splashy vacations in exotic locations disguised as press events, and other benefits from Ford or other automakers we can say this without fear of losing our cushy perks. Other car sites are beholden to the manufacturers like Ford, so they fall in line.
As a sidenote, when it comes to midsize truck sales Toyota still dominates big time. Despite Ford’s best efforts at promoting the Ranger, it managed to achieve only 94,755 units delivered last year, down from 101,486 in 2020. Compare that to the Tacoma, of which Toyota delivered a whopping 252,520 in 2021, up from 238,806 in 2020 and you see just how big of a shellacking Ford Trucks are taking right now.
