The best-selling vehicle in America is the Ford F-Series pickup truck, with 54,489 units sold in February and 101,330 units since the first of the year.
Coming in second was the Chevrolet Silverado pickup, with 41,643 units sold last month, 77,088 since New Year's; third was the Toyota Camry, 31,270 sales in Feb., 63,167 since Jan. 1; and fourth was the Honda Accord, with 27,990 units sold last month and 51,923 since the first of the year; and rounding out fifth is the Ford Fusion, which sold 27,875 in Feb. and 50,274 overall in 2013, Data compiled by Reuters shows those five vehicles led the auto market in sales volume not only in February, but since the first of the year.
After the top five, February's 20 next best-selling rides continue with the Nissan Altima, Toyota Corolla and Ford Escape, followed by the Dodge Ram pick-up, then the Honda Civic, Ford Focus, Honda CR-V and Chevy Equinox. The Chevy Cruze comes next, followed by the Toyota Prius, Ford Explorer, Hyundai Elantra, Hyundai Sonata, Chevy Impapla and Chevy Malibu.
The Ford F-Series has been the best-selling truck in the U.S. for 35 straight years.
This year, Ford introduces its the all-new Platinum series model along with SYNC personalized voice-recognition program andh MyFord Touch telematics service --- which makes the first time the two options will be available in the truck line-up.
A new 8-inch, high-resolution touch screen display enhances phone access, climate control, entertainment and navigation features, and includes a dramatically improved voice control command set.
The Platinum also provides a rearview camera behind the truck that's activated when in reverse and displayed on the 8-inch screen. The interface for MyFord Touch has a modified touchscreen interface to allow those wearing work gloves to access controls without removing their gloves.
When truck sales nationally jumped last month, analysts chalked the gains to cash-back deals offer in particular by General Motors. But GM's incentives actually decreased in January and while it truck sales rose, as did those for Ford, Toyota and Chrysler.
"Pickups finally had that breakthrough month that we've been expecting for some time," said Jesse Toprak, an analyst with consumer research site TrueCar.com, told a reporter from Cleveland.com . "The average age of a truck is now over 11 years, and eventually those have to be replaced."
Put another way, as they slowly make headway in the economy --- despite the political wrangling in Washington over flavor-of-the-day crises like sequestration, the debt ceiling or balancing the federal budget --- consumers in general are starting to claim a little more confidence and spending initiative.
Which means, consumers are generally more willing now to go out and buy new trucks, or cars.