Top 10 Best-Selling Cars: June 2015
If you see a lot of shiny new cars at this weekend’s fireworks show, June sales are the reason why. With the top seven automakers reporting sales, car shoppers drove up June sales 3.4 percent versus a strong June 2014 to reportedly keep the industry on pace to hit 17 million sales in 2015.
Related: Top 10 Best-Selling Cars: May 2015
A gallon of gas is still about 90 cents cheaper than it was a year ago, and shoppers piled into almost every type of SUV imaginable. With new players like the Honda HR-V and Jeep Renegade, subcompact SUV sales more than doubled versus a year ago. Shoppers drove compact, midsize and large SUVs to sizable gains, too.
Full-size, truck-based SUV sales (models like the Chevrolet Tahoe and Toyota Sequoia) declined, and so did most sales of sedans and hatchbacks, with subcompacts and midsize family-car segments all down versus a year ago. Compact cars bucked the trend with a 1.4 percent increase thanks in large part to the Hyundai Elantra, which saw sales skyrocket 55 percent compared to last June. That’s versus a bad year-ago month for Elantra sales, but even compared to June 2013, Hyundai’s popular compact saw big gains. The automaker bought its way there, as purchase incentives in June for the 2015 Elantra sedan were almost $3,000 per car. That’s a heck of a deal for any car, let alone an affordable compact. A year ago, incentives for the 2014 Elantra topped out at just $1,500. June’s higher incentives brought in shoppers, and Hyundai is back in the top 10 for the first time in three months.
The continuing shift to trucks likely boosted transaction prices across all cars, which increased more in June (year over year) than they had in April and May. Nowhere was that more apparent than with full-size pickup trucks, where shoppers paid significantly more last month than they had a year ago for light-duty variants. Purchase incentives increased on most big sellers, too, which means truck shoppers may have put the savings toward more options or higher trim levels.
The Chevrolet Silverado ended the month a stone’s throw from the best-selling Ford F-Series, whose sales fell 8.9 percent. Ford didn’t seem to mind the drop, as F-Series shoppers are spending about $3,600 more per truck than they were a year ago. That gain led most of the month’s popular sellers.
Here are the top 10 best-selling cars in June 2015:
