Region Swoons for Pickup Lines
May 17, 2011
Statistics for the first half of the year show that the Ford F150 pickup is the Southeast's most popular vehicle, with more than 43,000 new registrations in the region in those six months, according to a study by Polk Co., a Detroit automotive-research company. The F150 captured the No. 1 spot in four of five Southeastern states. (Only in Alabama, where General Motors Corp.'s Chevrolet CK150 pickup came out on top, was the Ford Motor Co. truck outrun.) Other vehicles making a strong showing in the region also were pickups: The Chevrolet CK150 was No. 2 in Tennessee, and No. 3 in Georgia and South Carolina. Ford's Ranger had the third-best showing in Tennessee. ``It's kind of a stereotype that there are a lot of pickup drivers in the South,'' says Jefferson Deana, senior research associate with the University of Michigan's Office for the Study of Automotive Transportation. But that's not unusual, he says, because ``what drives sales most is regional climate and topography,'' and the South still has many rural areas and farmland that can best be served with pickups. Florida, as usual, separated itself from the rest of the region by making the Toyota Camry its top seller. But Florida car buyers shared a preference for the Ford Explorer with buyers in Georgia and the Carolinas, where the vehicle was No. 2, and in Alabama, where it was third. --Jacquelyne Wicker
