Last year might have been one of the worst in automotive history, but that didn't prevent a trio of U.S. truck manufacturers from scoring top overall automotive sales figures for their best-selling pickups. And although the annual sales list perennially includes the Ford F-150 pickup – the world's single best-selling model among all types of vehicles, including cars – this time around Big Blue shared the accolades with General Motors and Dodge.
The F-150 (shown in this article) – which continued to rack up the highest sales figures among all cars and trucks, with a grand total of 413,625 buyers in 2009 – ranked No. 1 on the list, ahead of the Toyota Camry. Right behind them in third place was the Chevrolet Silverado, with 316,544 vehicles sold, well ahead of numbers 4 through 9 (all cars).
Finishing up in tenth place was the new-for-'09 Dodge Ram 1500, with a sales total of 177,268.
To be sure, 2009 was not a good year for the automotive industry as a whole, and even these winning numbers didn't stack up to previous years' sales totals. Ford F-150 sales for 2009 were down 19.8 percent from 2008, the Dodge Ram was down 28 percent, and Silverado sales were down 31.9 percent.
In an interesting footnote, the fifth best-selling pickup for 2009 was a Toyota – but it was the midsize Tacoma, not the full-size Tundra. The Tacoma sold 111,824 vehicles for the year (virtually a dead heat with the fourth-ranked GMC Sierra, which sold 111,842), while the big Tundra came in a distant sixth on the pickup list with just 79,385 in sales.
