A deeper look at 3 key reasons why the Ford F-150 lost its spot as America’s best-selling vehicle

The Toyota RAV4 just dethroned the Ford F-150 as America’s best-selling vehicle.

The Ford F-150 was dethroned for the first time in 47 years, making it a huge deal.

In sporting terms, it was the equivalent of Manchester City finally winning the league for the first time in 44 years after spending decades as the ‘other club in Manchester’.

But was this a one-off, or has the tide shifted?

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America’s best-selling vehicle… for as long as we can remember

The F-Series, with the Ford F-150 accounting for well over 90 percent of the sales on a bad year, had reigned as America’s best-selling vehicle and, year in year out, the best-selling vehicle in the world for nearly 50 years.

If you’re a car person and old enough to remember the time when MTV was still relevant and playing Top Trumps cards was a thing, you must’ve read a thousand articles and watched a thousand TV segments about the Ford F-150.

Similes and metaphors were written, and comparisons were made.

One time, a presenter said you could ‘park all Ford trucks sold last year one next to the other – side by side, not nose to tail – and cover the circumference of the Earth… twice’.

And this, remember, is a vehicle that’s basically only sold in North America.

The Ford F-Series truck remained America’s best-selling vehicle for 47 (!) years in a row for four simple reasons.

It’s a truck, it has (had?) a V8, it’s robust, and it’s cheap.

It wasn’t rocket science, it didn’t have to do with any sophisticated tech or fancy hidden gadgets.

But the Toyota RAV4 had been closing in on the F-150 for some time and, in 2024, it finally caught up.

The question is why, and there are at least three reasons we can think of.

How did this happen?

There are at least three reasons behind this unprecedented shift.

For starters, while the F-150 still only has to worry about the usual suspects in its ‘truck’ category, competition in the market when you include other types of vehicle is now fiercer than before.

Translated, the F-150 is still good enough to beat its direct segment rivals from GMC, Ram and Chevy, but it is struggling to keep up with stubborn newcomers, like the Model Y for example, and old foes, such as the Toyota RAV4, when we look at the market more broadly.

The Model Y, lest we forget, was the best-selling car in the world in 2023 and 2024.

Price is the second reason.

The F-150 starts at around $38,000, which is cheap, but the Toyota RAV4 starts at around $31,000, which is, well, cheaper.

And then there’s the elephant in the room.

V8 vs V6 vs electric power

The third reason may have to do with the engine under the hood.

Until recently, every Ford F-Series truck had a V8 in it.

That’s no longer the case, but even though customers seem to appreciate the V6, sales numbers confirm that, the jury is still out regarding the F-150 Lightning, which is the electric version.

The F-150 Lightning has been underperforming, not just against direct rivals such as the Cybertruck, but in absolute terms as well.

The situation is bleak, so much so that Ford decided to pause production for around two months between late 2024 and the beginning of 2025.

But, paradoxically, even though it didn’t sell as well as Ford hoped, the F-150 Lightning may still have (indirectly) contributed to the ‘dethronization’ of the F-Series.

There are still a lot of silver linings to Ford’s cloud, though.

The Ford F-150 is still the best-selling truck in America, and still one of the best-selling vehicles globally.

And, speaking of never-seen-before records, the Mustang Mach-E was the third best-selling EV in the U.S. last year and, this is truly incredible.

It even outsold the ‘normal’, gas-powered Mustang.