Some People Still Want Trucks, Just Won't Pay Retail

Customers still want trucks, it’s just that now more than ever, they refuse to pay retail.

Given big enough discounts, slightly cheaper gas prices, and in some cases brand-new, redesigned models, some truck customers came back in August, based on sales results announced last week. August results included a 9.4 percent increase in sales of the Chevrolet Avalanche, of all things, to 4,031 units, according to AutoData.

The Avalanche is a hulking, four-door SUV — with a pickup-truck bed in the back for good measure, as if it wasn’t big enough already. Year to date, Avalanche sales were down 31.7 percent to 24,866. That drop is what you would expect, given the spike in gas prices earlier this year.

Yet gas prices continue to moderate, if you can call it that, to a national average of $3.65 on Sept. 9, according to the AAA. That, and GM is offering its Employee Discount for Everyone through Sept. 30. When they were first announced last month, the main idea behind the discounts was to sell off leftover 2008 models, and to get a jump on a few 2009 models. GM last week extended the offers and also added several more 2009s.

Depending on the model, the Employee Discount offer and an additional cash-back incentive are worth a total of almost $9,000 off the Avalanche.

“As gas prices have decreased in the past month, increased incentives offers such as low interest rates, employee pricing discounts and cash-back rebates have contributed to a resurgence in interest for large vehicles,” according to kbb.com, the consumer shopping web site for Kelly Blue Book, Irvine, Calif.

GM wasn’t the only one. Sales of the Nissan Xterra SUV jumped 76.9 percent in August to 8,208 also thanks in part to incentives. Year to date, Xterra sales were down 18.1 percent. Sales of the Honda Pilot, which is a redesigned model for 2009, increased 18.6 percent in August, to 11,276. Year to date, the Pilot was off 16.8 percent.

All this is not to say that trucks are making a roaring comeback. For the entire industry, light-truck sales in August were down 22.1 percent from the year-ago month, to 620,846. That was actually a little worse than year-to-date light-truck sales, which were down 19.3 percent, to about 4.7 million.

However, the August results are another sign that trucks aren’t as totally out of fashion as it appeared, when gas topped $4 a gallon.