Top 10 Best-Selling Cars: February 2015
It was a hard month, weather-wise, for big portions of the U.S., but that didn’t stop shoppers from snapping up cars and trucks at a breakneck pace. For the second month of 2015, the top seven automakers have reported that sales increased 4.9 percent versus February 2014. Of course weather was bad last year too, with wide swaths of the country buried under snow at this time last year, so drawing apples-to-apples comparisons isn’t so difficult.
Related: February’s Fastest- and Slowest-Selling Cars
Ford continues to dominate sales with its redesigned F-Series model, but the model’s sales were down 1.2 percent from the same month last year; it’s not posting gains due to highly constrained inventory. Ford says it’s training personnel at a second assembly plant in Kansas City to build the F-150, but that’s not going to help the automaker in the short term.
Truck sales across the board were hot thanks to gas prices that didn’t increase too much and new home construction, which did. The Chevrolet Silverado jumped an impressive 24.1 percent in February, providing an early indication that the arrival of the midsize Chevrolet Colorado, which sold more than 6,000 units in February, hasn’t impacted sales of the automaker’s full-size truck at all. As popular as the new Colorado is proving to be, it still was outsold by the old Toyota Tacoma, which saw nearly twice as many trucks fly off dealer lots.
Small and midsize crossovers are still proving popular as well, with the Honda CR-V a big seller. Its sales were up 7.4 percent, narrowly edging out a surging Toyota RAV4 (up 33 percent) to keep the title of most popular SUV for February. The Nissan Rogue had its best-ever month, with sales up 24.6 percent, providing a challenge for the CR-V and RAV4, but Ford’s Escape saw sales take a tumble, down 9.6 percent for the month. Jeep’s small Cherokee is making big numbers as well, posting growth of 18.9 percent, but the incentives are flowing hot and heavy on the hood of every one Jeep sells. Of the bigger SUVs, the Ford Explorer is the top seller, posting a 31.8 percent sales gain for February.
The Toyota Camry remains the most popular passenger car, followed closely by the Nissan Altima. The Ford Fusion outsold the Honda Accord, which dropped off the best-sellers list this month; it posted a sales decline of more than 12 percent from February 2014. Toyota’s passenger cars did relatively well, with both the Camry and Corolla posting sales gains, while nearly every other automaker experienced a decline in passenger cars: The Chevrolet Cruze fell 16.2 percent, the Honda Civic dropped 2.5 percent, the Hyundai Elantra fell 4.2 percent and the Ford Focus dropped 12 percent.
See how the top 10 best-selling vehicles did for February in the table below.
