Light Trucks Are The Industry's Cash Cow With Almost Ten Million Sales

News has come in via Automotive News that for the first time ever, automakers are on target to sell a whopping ten million light trucks this year. That's a whole lot of trucks, but when you see what's on offer in the market it sort of makes sense. The stuff that's already on showroom floors and the concepts we're seeing are amazing and they not only have a host of innovative features, they're actually functional. Some models do so well they do a lot to sustain a brand's bottom line.

It's sort of like a scale for the 2016 year though, because as one side of the industry is rising, another has taken a bit of a downturn, that of car sales. So far cars don't seem to be on track to sell seven million units this year, and that's worrying because that hasn't happened since 2011 when the global economy was in turmoil. Worse still, it will be just the fourth time that's happened since way back in 1962. On the SUV side, sales and interest is climbing worldwide, which makes a bit of sense because they're basically a combination of cars and trucks in a sense. If they'll catch up to trucks remains to be seen, but that would probably take until 2020 to happen, if at all.

Erich Merkle, Ford Motor Co.'s chief U.S. sales analyst said, "The industry is not quite as strong as it was last year, but we're going up against some really tough year-over-year comparisons, so we expect that the industry will be down a little bit compared to record sales numbers we were achieving in the second half of last year particularly." For October, trucks accounted for 63 percent of total volume, up from 59 percent a year ago, while midsize cars fell 21 percent, but midsize crossover sales rose by 4.2 percent. Large SUVs surged 29 percent, while large cars fell by the same number. Compact premium crossovers rose by a large 42 percent while luxury cars dropped 20 percent. Interesting times.

Check out midsize SUVs comparison.