I grew up in Texas. I went to college there and got married. Bought a house. Ate a lot of BBQ and tacos. Watched football. Sat in a hot, powerless home just counting the minutes until I could bask in the air-conditioned halls of an HEB. Texas things. Growing up, your full-size truck options were: F-150, some kind of GMC/Chevy, or one of those “other” trucks. The “other” truck was almost always a Dodge Ram. New data shows that the Ram is at risk of losing this honor.
Speaking of losing things, dealers are estimated to have lost about a billion dollars in the CDK Global cyberattack. Maybe relying on one company for everything is a bad idea — other than The Autopian. You should definitely rely on The Autopian for all of your news, apparel, fashion advice, and entertainment.
And, because time is a flat circle, let’s end with Musk delaying one of his projects and Stellantis getting in another tiff with its own suppliers.
Ram 1500 Slips To 5th In Market Share Behind Toyota Tundra
I like the new Toyota Tundra, much as I like most new Toyota products. Would it be the first truck I’d buy? Probably not. I’m still, in my heart, an F-150 man. If I wanted a diesel truck for towing, well, I’d probably buy a GMC Sierra. If I was just tooling around town? The Ram 1500 is a mighty comfortable truck.
That’s roughly the order of full-size half-ton trucks in my brain, and that’s mostly the way it’s been for more than a decade. Just because it’s in third place doesn’t mean I don’t love a Ram, of course. My wife drove a red, short cab/short bed 1500 with the Magnum V6 when we started dating, so I have many fond memories of Ram, going back to when it was a Dodge Ram and not a Ram Ram.
If you group the Sierra/Silverado as one truck unit, then American preferences have long agreed with me (which is rare, otherwise we’d have gotten a 2nd season of Keen Eddie). Sales figures show that it’s usually been F-150, Silverado/Sierra, and Ram 1500 in the top three. If you want to get super detailed, it’s long been F-150, then Silverado, then Ram 1500, then Sierra.
No more. Look at this:
Automakers do not give breakdowns of specific truck sales in any helpful way, so when we get quarterly sales data we only get to see “Ram P/U” for instance, which includes all of the larger Ram 2500 and Ram 3500 trucks. The same goes for Ford. At least Ford gives us monthly data, both GM and Stellantis now report on a quarterly basis.
Therefore, we’re left with looking at retail registration data at a long delay, as S&P Global Mobility did here. This data only gets us to April, but it shows the rise of the Tundra since its debut in 2021 and the sudden decline of the Ram 1500. The fact that the Ram 1500 slips to fifth in April, behind both the Sierra and Tundra, is alarming.
It gets even worse:
Those are inflows and outflows from the Tundra from/to other competitors. Since the debut of the new truck in 2022, the Tundra gained more ground than it lost and, in particular, picked up a ton of conquests from Ram 1500 owners.
Now, Ram is still selling the old-ass Ram 1500 Classic (which I like) as it preps for a new truck. David drove the new 2025 Ram 1500 and thought it was a strong entrant into the market. It’s possible this is just a blip as Ram flips over to a new truck and the new 1500 will stop the slide, but so far Toyota sales are up 31% this year while Ram sales are down 20%. [Ed Note: It’s likely that the transition to the new-generation truck is hurting sales (the old gen was a bit long-in-the-tooth for its price, along with high interest rates. I did have an initial thought that maybe Stellantis (who has made it clear that it wants to stop buying carbon credits from competitors) was trying to reduce its overall GHG footprint (and therefore carbon credit requirement), but to do that by reducing Ram volumes sounds like a bad and absurdly expensive idea. -DT].
It’ll take a lot more conquests for Tundra to surpass Ram and I’m doubtful it’ll happen this year. The fact that it’s a conversation at all is more bad news for Stellantis.
Study: Dealers Lost $1 Billion In Revenue From CDK Global Attack
As we thought, the CDK Global ransomware attack has massively disrupted about half of the dealerships in the United States. How bad is the damage? Estimates show that June sales definitely suffered, coming in below expectations.
Now a new analysis shows that dealers probably lost in excess of $1 billion during the three-week period from the start of the attack to the resolution.
Based on June sales results, Anderson Economic Group on Monday issued a revised estimate to its June 28 estimate, which was a prediction that dealers would experience $944 million in losses. The group now estimates that total direct losses to car dealers in the three calendar weeks of the cyberattack actually reached $1.02 billion.
[…]
The $1.02 billion in losses includes revenue from the nearly 56,200 new car sales that Anderson Economic Group estimated were lost during the three-week period. It also factors in lost earnings on parts and service, additional staffing and IT service costs, and additional floor plan interest costs on inventory that could not be sold. The estimate does not include damages to consumers, reputational damages to dealers, litigation costs and multiple other categories of damages, said Patrick Anderson, CEO of the group.
You can almost hear the lawsuits now.
Musk Delaying Robotaxi
How do you know a Tesla product is real? It gets delayed. In this case, the long-promised Tesla Robotaxi was going to be shown off on August 8th. Then that event got pushed back to October. And now?
Requested what I think is an important design change to the front, and extra time allows us to show off a few other things
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 15, 2024
Musk gonna Musk.
Stellantis In Another Fight With Its Suppliers
When not antagonizing governments, Stellantis loved to beef with its suppliers. This doesn’t always go well, but Stellantis keeps doing it anyway. Why? Carlos Tavares, pictured left above, seems to love to squeeze the most out of everything and everyone.
This time it’s a company that makes fuel tanks for the Pacifica PHEV, stating that it needs an increase in unit price to help cover its own costs. The basic supplier line in all these negotiations is that Stellantis has made huge profits, partially on the backs of suppliers who shipped fewer products during the pandemic and have seen their own input costs go up.
Stellantis reportedly tried to get a judge to stop the supplier from ending its shipments of parts, saying the line would have to be shut down, but a judge denied the motion.
The decision is a blow for Stellantis as the automaker turns to the court to protect it from supplier demands for better pricing. The company has argued that its suppliers are bound by contract terms even if the economics have become unfavorable. Lawyers representing the suppliers have argued that the supply agreements are not enforceable requirement contracts.
In a case against MacLean-Fogg, Oakland County Judge Michael Warren also denied a preliminary injunction against the supplier. To keep production going, Stellantis is paying the company under protest while the case works its way through the court. After the judge indicated that Stellantis was likely to win the case on merits, however, MacLean-Fogg’s attorneys moved the case to federal court.
I’m not an expert in any of this, so I’m curious to see how it all plays out.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
It’s Tom Jones on the Ed Sullivan show. What else do you need?
The Big Question
Can Ram hold off the Tundra or will Tundra replace the Ram 1500? What’s your favorite big truck?