Ford F-Series: America’s New Luxury Car?
Makers of luxury automobiles should be afraid of the Ford F-Series. Very afraid.
When you think of luxury automobiles, brands like Lexus, BMW, and Mercedes probably come to mind. The same holds true with the makers of said luxury vehicles. When they envision their competition, they undoubtedly look sideways. But they might want to start looking up instead. Because that tunnel vision is preventing them from seeing the true threat in the luxury car business – the Ford F-Series pickup.
After all, the F-Series outsells every other vehicle on the market, hands down. And plenty of folks with higher incomes are choosing trucks over cars these days. But the actual statistics behind this thinking are rather mind blowing. And as Alabama Media Group points out in a very poignant piece, the reason why folks flock to pickups these days is not what you might think.
The Ford F-Series, after all, has virtually no competition in the southern U.S. In mid-Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and the Florida Gulf Coast, buyers with an annual household income of $200,000+ are more than twice as likely to buy an F-Series than the current best selling luxury vehicle – the Lexus RX. Buyers with a sub $200k income are five times likelier to go with the Ford.
But what’s driving this unusual trend? Turns out, the same thing that attracts people to luxury brands is now attracting them to trucks – image. A 2016 study showed that a whopping 44% of F-Series buyers chose them for that very reason. These affluent, non-millennial male and female customers are attracted to Ford trucks for a reason nobody would have guessed.
It makes a lot of sense when you factor in the tremendous rise in the sales of premium trim level trucks over the last couple of years. When buyers can opt for the image truck ownership brings while also enjoying the same luxury appointments of a high end car in a vehicle that can also tow, haul, and go off road, why wouldn’t they buy one?
