The list of the best-selling vehicles in any given year can be exciting, especially if one or two vehicles have jumped on the list from the previous year. Or if a longtime sales champion drops a few notches. Damned, we just published earlier today. But while Andy was busy doing important work that would actually drive website traffic, I was distracted looking at meaningless sales comparisons. Somehow, I was able to convince Bob to let me write about them, maybe so I’ll stop sharing them on our Slack channel.
Let’s start with the car with the biggest percentage increase in sales this year. That honor belongs to the Hyundai Ioniq 5, which has improved from 153 units sold in 2021 to 22,982 units in 2022, an increase of more than 14,000%. Sure, it’s not technically on sale until December 2021, but hey, win is win.
Since I shared the most improved car, I guess I should share the worst car as well. The Toyota Land Cruiser won that award, growing from 3,711 units in 2021 to 48 in 2022. I guess not making cars anymore will make it harder to sell the cars. That’s almost a 99 percent drop in sales.
But perhaps the purpose of all of you here is to find out which car has the lowest sales performance year over year. It was a close race, but the Chevrolet Tahoe won with sales down 0.25% from 2021 (105,754 vs 106,019). Second place in this category belongs to the Ford Edge. It actually increased sales by 0.28% in 2022 (85,225 vs 85,465). Now that’s the kind of consistency we want to see.
Moving on to the raw numbers, Ford sold 74,370 Mavericks last year, easily beating the Hyundai Santa Cruz’s 36,480. But did you know Santa Cruz outsells the Jeep Wagoneer, Volkswagen Jetta and Toyota Venza? If you didn’t, now you do. In fact, it ranks right behind the BMW 4 Series in terms of total sales.
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Then there’s the Lucid Air, which only began deliveries this year. 1,949 cars delivered isn’t anywhere close to enough to dethrone the Tesla Model S, but it did outsell the Hyundai Veloster and the Infiniti Q60. And the Genesis GV60? It came within three sales of tying the Audi A8, and it beat out the BMW Z4 by 25 units.
Actually, on the subject of the Z4, only 1,565 were sold in 2022. Meanwhile, Toyota sold 4,952 Supras. Oh, and do you remember the Hyundai Nexo? With 408 sales, it outsold both the Audi R8 and the Acura NSX. I know the R8 is getting old, but I don’t know if I want to live in a world where there’s more demand for a California-only hydrogen fuel cell crossover than a V10-powered supercar. Similarly, I know for a fact that I don’t like living in a world where two more people bought a Fiat 500X than bought an Audi TT.
Before I wrap this up, let’s hit a few more in rapid succession. The Volkswagen ID.4 beat the Nissan Titan. The Kia Forte beat the Toyota Tundra. The Hyundai Palisade beat the BMW X5 and the GMC Yukon. The Honda Odyssey beat the Ford Mustang. The Ford Mach E beat the Chevrolet Bolt. The Ford Ecosport beat the Mazda3. The Mini Cooper beat the Subaru WRX. The Nissan Leaf beat the Nissan Armada.
OK, I think that’s enough for now. Did you learn anything useful or important? Probably not. But do you now have a laundry list of fun facts to share at parties? You betcha. Now go forth and annoy your friends, family, romantic partners, and Tinder dates with these fun and interesting conversation starters.
