A Look Back on 2021 Car Sales

2021 was a strange year for car sales, giving us something to talk about that is much different from other years.

This was a year that saw a foreign automaker take down the US sales champion that had been reigning since the Great Depression. This was also a year that saw record numbers in the used car market, caused by the pandemic. Let’s see how many cars were sold and which models made it to the top of the charts. Of course, we’ll also dip our toes in the used car conversation.

Let’s Dip that Toe

The stories were widespread during 2021 and are starting to spill into 2022. This was a year of record sales in the used car market, which was caused by the pandemic and a few unfortunate events.  Those unfortunate events caused automakers to be without the necessary semiconductor chips that are used to operate the computers of the vehicles we drive. This caused many automakers to fall short of production goals, leaving car dealers without the necessary inventory to continue to sell new models.

What were dealers to do? With empty spaces on their lots, they had to turn to used cars to increase sales and keep their revenues up. This meant partnering with financial institutions holding the lease rights to vehicles to limit where drivers could return their leased vehicles, buying more used inventory than ever before, and changing their sales process.

The result of the car shortage of 2021 was a strong increase in used car sales during this year. In fact, more than 40.9 million used cars were sold last year, which was an increase of nearly ten percent. More than half of these sales were retail sales, which came in at an estimated 22.2 million models sold last year. Will 2022 show the same numbers for used cars? That’s hard to predict right now.

New Vehicles: Who Beat Who?

Every automaker has a target they are aiming at and one on their back as well. The only ones that typically don’t have one of these targets would be the top-selling company and a startup that will start aiming at other companies. With this targeting in mind, let’s see who beat who last year.

Toyota Topples GM for the First Time–Ever

It’s been huge news for the past couple of weeks; Toyota had more car sales in 2021 than GM. This is big news for two reasons. First, GM has dominated the sales numbers since the Great Depression, never being beaten in the US market. Second, Toyota is not one of the Detroit Big Three, making Toyota an outsider that took down a giant.

Of course, Toyota is not a small company and has a huge presence in the US market, but it seemed unlikely this brand would ever be callable of topping the king of sales. Because Toyota smartly stockpiled the semiconductor chips after the early warning system set off alarms in their supply chain, they were able to continue to build vehicles when other automakers were shutting down plants and halting production.

Hyundai-Kia Beat Honda

Here you see an example of one of those targets. It’s never happened before, but the 2021 car sales numbers tell us that Hyundai-Kia beat Honda in the US market. This puts the Hyundai-Kia pairing in the fifth position with nearly 1.5 million vehicles sold last year. That number topped Honda by about 22,500 models.

The next target for the Hyundai Group is Stellantis (Chrysler) which had sales that came close to 1.8 million models, and then Ford that showed up with 1.9 million vehicles sold last year. Will Hyundai be able to catch one of these automakers, or will this be a single-year anomaly in the market?

A Challenge in the EV Market

At some point, Tesla is going to have to break out sales per market to give numbers that make sense. We know this company sold nearly one million vehicles last year, which makes for a banner year, but that was globally. We expect most of these to be sold in the US, but it could be that most of them were sold in China or in Europe.

There is an automaker ready to start chipping away at the Tesla dominance. That automaker is Ford. Right now, we only have the new Mustang Mach-E, but that electric crossover sold more than 27,000 miles last year. Expect Ford to be one of the biggest challenges for Tesla when it comes to EV sales in the United States.

A Muscle Car War – Classic Names Go Head to Head

The three muscle cars of the Detroit Big Three go head to head in nearly every category, including sales. The Dodge Challenger took the title for the most car sales in 2021, with 54,314 models sold. Even though this car is the oldest, it is the one that more buyers wanted to drive last year.

Second place goes to the Ford Mustang, which came in at 52,414 models sold, showing a drop of 14 percent last year. The Chevrolet Camaro brings up the rear for sales with only 21,893 models sold, representing a 27 percent drop in overall sales.

The True Truck Battle –Brand Loyalty on Display

For 2021, pickup trucks not only went to the top of the charts for car sales, but they also battled hard to get to these positions.  The dominance of the Ford F-Series trucks was on full display with 726,000 models sold, while the Ram trucks came in at just a little under 570,000 models sold last year. This left the Chevrolet Silverado models to bring up the rear at 520,000 trucks that were sold last year. These three trucks were the vehicles sold the most in the United States, which made for an impressive year in the automotive market.

Will truck sales continue to dominate the landscape? Can Ford catch Tesla, and will Tesla give us market numbers? Can GM retake its crown, or will it belong to Toyota for a second straight year? Only 2022 will tell the tale and answer these questions.