BySean Tucker01/04/2023 8:33am
In 1982, Michael Jackson released “Thriller,” a thing called a computer was Time’s Man of the Year (they still called it “man,”) and the Ford F-Series overtook the Oldsmobile Cutlass to become America’s best-selling vehicle. Forty-one years later, it’s still defending that title, according to Ford.
One Sold Every 49 Seconds
In a statement, Ford claims, “Ford F-Series will surpass 640,000 trucks in 2022, making it America’s best-selling truck for 46 consecutive years and America’s best-selling vehicle for 41 years.” Kelley Blue Book parent company Cox Automotive hasn’t released its own sales tally yet, but we have no reason to doubt that the king is alive.
Ford, the company says, sold an average of “one F-Series truck every 49 seconds last year.”
Work Trucks, Luxury Trucks, Electric Trucks, Performance Trucks
The 2023 F-150 also took home our Best Buy Award in the full-size truck segment. But today’s F-Series is a lineup of trucks more than it is any one vehicle.
With best-in-class payload and towing numbers and a starting price as low as $33,695 (plus $1,795 destination), it can be a hard-charging work truck. Even the base XL trim features niceties like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.
It can also be a near-luxury vehicle, boasting leather seats, Ford’s BlueCruise hands-free driving assist system, an 18-speaker Bang & Olufsen audio system, and a price tag starting in the mid $80,000 range.
Ford builds off-road F-150 models under the Tremor and Raptor names (and soon the less pricey Rattler).
And there’s an electric one, too. Ford counted sales of its F-150 Lightning toward the 2023 total. The Lightning claimed our first-ever Best Buy Award in the electric pickup category.
The F-Series lineup also includes heavy-duty models like the Ford F-250 and F-350 Super Duty trucks.
The F-150 has been America’s best-selling vehicle since the early Reagan years, and its best-selling truck for five years longer than that. The topsy-turvy economy amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the microchip shortage briefly threatened the title. The Ram 1500 took the podium for one quarter of 2021 as Ford production slipped.
