The pickup truck market, believed to be near death as recently as July, showed a remarkable rebound in August, as falling gasoline prices and hefty incentives brought once-reluctant buyers back into dealer showrooms.
It was such a remarkable turnaround in the sales figures released last week that the Chevrolet Silverado ended up as the nation's best-selling vehicle for the month, unseating the gas-sipping Honda Civic, which had become a consumer favorite as gasoline spiked to $4 a gallon or more.
Sales of the Ford F-150, which had been the nation's best-selling vehicle for 22 years until it ceded that spot to the Civic in March, were strong enough to make it the fourth-best-selling vehicle for August, giving Ford Motor Co. some encouragement as it prepares to introduce the next generation of the pickup in November. Franklin-based Nissan was the only major automaker to post sales gains for August, results that came courtesy of a 32.4 percent increase in its truck sales.
Despite the robust August sales numbers, analysts remain pessimistic about whether the revival can be sustained or whether pickups will ever regain their lofty position as the favorite new vehicles of American consumers.
"This shows that there are still a lot of people who want trucks," said Jim Hall, owner of the Michigan-based automotive consulting firm 2953 Analytics. "But a key to this success is that pickups are available for a song. Those incentives can pay for a lot of gas, even at $4 a gallon. The incentives in conjunction with fuel prices going down some are helping. Still, we can't tell yet what the natural demand will be. I don't think we've hit the bottom yet."
Mostly gone, at least for now, are the so-called "casual truckers," people with no real need for pickups but who had been buying them anyway mostly for personal transportation, analysts said.
Incentives were high in August, and most of them are continuing through September, including GM's "Employee Pricing for Everyone" promotion, which began in mid-August.
That sale combined with cash rebates as high as $5,000 on Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups have cut $10,000 or more off the sticker prices of some of these trucks.
'Still a buyer's market'At Nashville's Jim Reed Chevrolet, an extended-cab version of the 2008 Silverado is going for as low as $16,700 — about $10,300 below sticker price, said Sales Manager Chuck Kramer.
"Trucks are selling well, but it's still a buyer's market," he said. "The Silverado is our best-seller right now."
The same trend holds for Neill-Sandler Buick-Pontiac-GMC in Murfreesboro, which General Manager Gary Beeler said posted its best sales month in almost two years.
"Our Sierras are our best-sellers," he said. "The deals on these vehicles are impressive, and there seems to be a lot more optimism among consumers than there was two or three months ago."
A Sierra 3500 heavy-duty pickup with a sticker price of just over $50,000 is now priced under $39,000 with the employee discount and rebates, Beeler said.
"There has been a tremendous pent-up demand that was caused by the price of fuel," said Terry Hart, general manager of Nashville's AutoFair Chevrolet. "But now that prices have come back to a more-reasonable level, sales of the Silverado have really picked up, along with our Tahoe, Suburban and TrailBlazer SUVs."
Dodge dealers also reported robust sales of the 2008 Ram, which is being discounted heavily as the automaker brings its completely redesigned 2009 model to market this month.
Chrysler's "Shop 'Til You Drive" sales promotion, which runs through September, knocks 40 percent off the stickers of the 2008 Ram and some other models as well.
"We had one of our best truck months of the year in August," said Mark Blick, general manager of Gary Mathews Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep in Clarksville. "We were selling them for half price, up to $13,000 off on some Ram models. There are rebates up to $10,000, and we still have a good supply on hand."
The August rebound in trucks didn't surprise Jack Nerad, executive editor and executive market analyst for Kelly Blue Book and kbb.com.
"I wasn't one who thought that $4 gas was the tipping point and that we would see nothing but small vehicles in the U.S. from now on," Nerad said. "I think there was some pent-up demand for pickups and large SUVs as well, and as gas prices have stabilized and come down some, people have decided to take advantage of some of these incentives.
"What we saw was just a pause in demand, and I think there will be a strong pickup market going ahead," he said. "I don't think that the guy who was considering a full-size pickup a year ago has necessarily changed his attitude. Some of the casual truckers will be back. What's the substitute for them? Not many vehicles are as distinctly masculine as pickups, and there is a portion of the market that really wants that."
Gas prices will be factorStill, no one expects the market for pickups to be as hot as before, especially if gasoline holds above $3 a gallon or begins to climb again, analysts agreed.
"I think the trend is still headed downward overall," said Ed Kim, director of industry analysis for the California-based marketing research firm AutoPacific. "There is some indication that sales have recovered to a point, but they have been driven in part by incentives.
"The pickup market in many ways got artificially large because fuel was so cheap," Kim said. "The fuel impact on the pocketbook was minimal for the casual trucker. But the memory of $4-a-gallon gasoline is too fresh for those people to come back."
Also hurting the market for pickups and large, truck-based SUVs is a feeling among some consumers that these vehicles are somehow politically incorrect, analysts said.
And even if sales stabilize, Kim said, they probably won't return to the levels seen earlier this decade, especially in 2004, which U.S. pickup sales peaked at nearly 2.5 million.
But the pickup market will stabilize and remain a key — and highly profitable — market segment for the automakers, he said.
"We are predicting sales of just over 1.5 million pickups this year, but by 2013, we see the market climbing up to about 1.7 million," Kim said.
"But that growth will be fueled by people who actually need trucks. The pickup truck is never going to go away. Aside from people actually needing them, they are part of our culture."
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