To hold a slowing market at bay, carmakers in the U.S. are offering the biggest incentives on full-sized pickups since December 2008, when the country was mired in recession and the auto industry was collapsing. Last month, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles’s Ram raised its average incentive on the trucks to $7,082, up 29 percent from a year earlier, according to J.D. Power data obtained by Bloomberg.
A price war on pickups has been simmering for a while. Last year, Ford cut prices by more than $10,000 on some models as it rolled out a new aluminum-bodied F-150. This summer, General Motors offered 20 percent off on its trucks. Ram is also continuing to offer a 20 percent discount on its oldest models.
Ram’s recent deal was its most generous in at least three years, and sales rose 29 percent in September. The company was the No. 2 seller in the U.S. truck market for the month, knocking off Chevrolet Silverado for the first time since at least 2010. Silverado sales fell 16 percent in the same period, and Ford’s F-Series, which has been the top selling pickup for almost 40 years, dropped 2.6 percent.
