Notes on 2012 North American Auto Sales The just-released 2012 North American auto sales data offer some insights into some marquee sales match-ups, like the crown for America's best-selling vehicle, Ford vs. Chevy for muscle-car bragging rights and how well America's definition of luxury stacks up against foreign competition. Using a Nascar analogy, Ford's F-Series trucks seem to have broken the draft on rival pickups from Chevrolet and GMC, and are pulling away. The F-Series line was America's best-selling vehicle in 2012, with 645,316 trucks sold, compared with 418,312 for the Chevrolet Silverado, which was No. Even if the largely similar GMC Sierra's sales of 157,185 were lumped together with Silverado's numbers, Ford still leads by about 70,000 units. Analysts also noted that G.M. trucks ended up as close as they did only by having the company slap huge incentives (up to $6,000 and even more, in some cases) on an 80-day inventory glut that existed as of Nov. 30. G.M. said it finished the year with a 30-day inventory, which was in line with what it said it needed to bridge a gap between the end of production of its outgoing 2013 models and the ramp-up in production next spring of its redesigned 2014 trucks. Ford's F-Series sales for the year were up 10.3 percent, while Silverado eked out a 0.8 percent gain because of the December incentive push. Sierra was up 5.4 percent in 2012. The big gainer, in terms of volume and percentage, was the Ram truck line, which was split from the Dodge brand in 2009. Ram sales were up a robust 19.9 percent for the year, a gain of nearly 50,000 units over 2011's solid sales. Ram finished the year as America's seventh best-selling vehicle. December marked Ram's 32nd consecutive month of year-over-year sales growth, the company said. Another marquee sales race, Chevrolet Camaro vs. Ford Mustang, to borrow another racing analogy, saw a close duel to the finish line. As it did in 2011, Camaro won again. But Camaro's 2011 margin of 18,000 units over Mustang slipped, to less than 1,500 in 2012. The final totals showed Camaro with 84,391 to 82,995 for Mustang. The trend line, however, seems to favor Mustang, sales of which jumped 17.8 percent in 2012 from its total of 70,438 units sold in 2011. Camaro, meanwhile, had a 4.3 percent decline from the 88,249 units it sold a year earlier. Those totals did not rank either of those cars among the industry's top sellers. Camaro and Mustang were in about 50th place among the 260 or so models tracked in the United States sales race in 2012. Dodge's Challenger was almost a footnote in this race, with sales of 43,110. One of the worst sales stories of 2012 involved the Buick Regal, whose sales plunged 38.7 percent, year over year, to just 24,616 units. The rest of the Buick brand overcame Regal's dismal performance, to finish 2012 with a 2 percent sales gain over 2011. Finishing in the black was a huge accomplishment compared with America's other luxury carmakers. Cadillac was down 2 percent, while Lincoln was off 4 percent, despite that each introduced important new models in 2012. Meanwhile, most German and Japanese luxury automakers were enjoying banner sales years in America; BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Lexus, Acura, Audi, Infiniti and Porsche all experienced sales gains of 14-27 percent in 2012 and recorded either record totals or their best totals since the onset of the 2008 recession. Besides the American luxury brands, the only other luxury carmakers whose 2012 sales were as disappointing were British brands Lotus, Aston Martin and Jaguar. Rolls-Royce avoided that list by selling 22 vehicles more in 2012 than it did in 2011 (384, up from 362) for a 6 percent increase.