Pickups drove up Toyota’s sales at end of year.
Trucks made in San Antonio helped drive up automaker’s figures
Toyota ended 2020 with a sales spike that softened the pandemic’s blow and helped the automotive giant emerge from the year stronger than expected.
Toyota’s sales were up 23 percent last month compared with December 2019, a jump driven largely by a calendar quirk that gave the automaker 28 selling days last month — three more than in the same month a year earlier.
The automaker’s surge was a positive sign for company heading into 2021, analysts said.
“You generally don’t see a 20 percent spike just because of three days,” said Jessica Caldwell, executive director of insights at the automotive website Edmunds.com. “This is a good story” for Toyota.
She said favorable financing terms for buyers helped. She also said Toyota likely was able to increase sales by expanding its inventory.
Earlier in 2020, the company was unable to produce enough vehicles to meet demand.
Toyota’s San Antonio-made pickups were among its hottestselling vehicles last year. That marked a continuation of the sales trend within the U.S. auto industry away from cars and toward trucks and SUVS that’s been underway in recent years.
In 2020, sales of Toyota’s midsize Tacoma and full-size Tundra pickups were down just 4 percent from 2019. The automaker’s total sales were down 11 percent last year.
“They experienced some of the benefits of the increased interest in pickup trucks,” Caldwell said.
Toyota outperformed the broader U.S. auto industry last year — slightly.
Total U.S. auto sales last year are expected to be below17 million for the first time since 2014, according to Cox Automotive.
While Toyota’s sales were down 11 percent, Cox analysts estimate total U.S. vehicle sales fell to 14.4 million last year, down 15 percent from 2019.
Nevertheless, after sales plummeted historically in March and April, the auto industry rebounded in the second half of 2020.
The year “presented the economy and the auto market with incredible challenges,” Johnathan Smoke, chief economist with Cox Automotive, said in a recent analysis. “As we close the year, it is remarkable to see how well the industry performed.”
In a year-end sales call Tuesday, Toyota executives said the uncertainty resulting from the pandemic was the largest challenge ahead for the automaker.
Retail auto sales are nearing pre-pandemic levels, but fleet sales — the large vehicle purchases that rental car companies and other businesses and government agencies make — have struggled to recover.
However, with the CO
VID-19 vaccine distribution underway, Caldwell said consumers soon could return to renting cars for leisure or business travel, bolstering fleet sales.
Beyond favorable interest rates and a vaccine, Caldwell said the auto industry could see a boost in 2021 from new products entering the market. They include revamped models of the Jeep Wagoneer and Ford Bronco.
And the introduction of electric pickups, such as GMC’S electric Hummer and Tesla’s Cybertruck, will mark “the birth of a new segment” of vehicles, Caldwell said.
Toyota has committed to developing a hybrid or electric model for each of its vehicles by 2025.
Beginning in April, the automaker will roll out 25 new or updated vehicle models over 16 months.
“We enter 2021 still battling the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Smoke of Cox Automotive. “But the distribution of vaccines gives us confidence that the economy and the auto market will both see continued progress once we get through the winter.”