The first quarter of 2026 produced one of the strangest US sales reports in recent memory. The Ford F-Series held its place at the top of the charts for what feels like the hundredth consecutive quarter. The Toyota RAV4, America’s favorite non-truck for eight years running, fell out of the top ten entirely. And the Ford Explorer, a model most people had written off as a safe, boring family hauler, posted a 29.7% year-over-year jump to dominate the three-row SUV segment.
Cox Automotive’s Q1 2026 data, released in late March and early April, paints a picture of an auto market that’s shrinking and shifting in real time. Total industry sales came in around 3.7 million units, a 6.5% drop from Q1 2025, with every major automaker except Mercedes-Benz posting year-over-year declines.
The seasonally adjusted annual rate settled around 15.8 million, a full tick below last year’s pace. Higher prices, still-elevated interest rates, the end of EV tax credits, and general consumer fatigue have combined to produce the slowest quarter in years.
But, despite this, we still have the winner-and-losers of the start of what looks to be a difficult year. Here’s what actually went down.
The truck that’s been America’s best-seller since 1977 didn’t exactly have a blowout quarter – sales were actually down 16% year-over-year to 159,901 units – but it still outsold its nearest competitor by more than 31,000 trucks. A September 2025 fire at aluminum supplier Novelis dented Q1 output, and the F-Series still ran away with the segment anyway.
The real surprise of the quarter. Explorer sales rose 29.7% to 61,387 units, according to Ford’s official Q1 release, with the higher-margin Platinum and Tremor trims climbing 64.5%. Its stablemate, the Expedition, was up 30.2% to 17,554 units. Three-row SUVs were supposed to be the next segment to cool off after full-size trucks did. Instead, Ford’s larger utility vehicles are apparently printing money.
After years of playing third fiddle in the full-size truck war, Ram moved 98,425 trucks in Q1, up from 78,848 in Q1 2025, per Stellantis’ own reporting cited by Autoevolution. The light-duty line jumped 27%. Ram’s return to the Hemi V8, the reintroduction of the TRX, and the headline-grabbing 10-year/100,000-mile powertrain warranty appear to be landing with buyers.
Quietly, the biggest percentage gainer of the quarter. The 4Runner’s Q1 sales were up 294% year-over-year to 33,244 units, with March alone moving 12,380 trucks – up 77.4% from March 2025. The previous-generation 4Runner had been winding down; the new generation is firing on all cylinders at exactly the moment other Toyota products are stalled.
It rode the RAV4’s misfortune beautifully. Rogue sales climbed 13% year-over-year and the SUV jumped two positions in the bestseller rankings, finishing above the RAV4 in Q1 for the first time in the model’s history, per Best Selling Cars.
Up 86.9% to 20,532 units. Toyota dealers quietly redirected RAV4-deprived shoppers here, and a lot of them bought.
Cox Automotive reported that electrified vehicles (including hybrids) hit a record 26% share of the US market in Q1, with Toyota alone accounting for 43% of hybrid sales. Affordability pressure is pushing buyers toward hybrids as the compromise entry point they can actually afford.
The biggest story of the quarter. RAV4 sales collapsed 48.1% to 59,869 units, down from 115,402 in Q1 2025, per Autoblog’s reporting. The SUV fell from America’s third-most-popular vehicle to 13th, dropping out of the top ten entirely. This isn’t a demand problem. Instead, it’s a production problem, with Toyota retooling its Kentucky plant for the all-new sixth-generation RAV4 and running on inventory from Japanese and Canadian plants in the meantime. CarBuzz estimates Toyota left about $2 billion on the table compared to Q1 2025. Full production is expected to come online by summer.
Cox Automotive’s Kelley Blue Book division pegged EV sales at 216,399 units for the quarter, down 27% year-over-year. EVs accounted for just 5.8% of total new-vehicle sales, well off the 10.6% peak from Q3 2025. The cancellation of the $7,500 federal tax credit in late 2025 is doing exactly what critics predicted it would.
Speaking of EV pain: the Lightning sold just 2,060 units in Q1, a 71.3% collapse from the prior year, as Ford winds it down in favor of a range-extended variant. The Mustang Mach-E also fell 60.4%.
Still the sales leader at 626,429 vehicles in Q1, but down 9.7% year-over-year. Cadillac and Buick were particularly weak, and Cox Automotive’s economist Charlie Chesbrough flagged GM as ceding 0.6 points of market share, potentially setting up a scenario where Toyota could outsell GM in the US as early as 2027.
Technically America’s top-selling SUV in Q1, but only because the RAV4 wasn’t available. CR-V sales were actually down by nearly 4,000 units year-over-year, a 3.8% decline. Holding the crown on a technicality…
Dropped from the seventh-most-popular vehicle in America to tenth, losing nearly 10,000 sales year-over-year. Compact SUVs are bleeding demand as mid-size segments pull shoppers upmarket.
Fell 78.4% in March. The gas-only version is doing fine, but the hybrid variant is getting crushed.
Consumers at the lower end of the market are getting priced out, which is why compact cars and compact SUVs are falling harder than the wider industry.
Mid-size segments are holding up, partly because people stepping down from larger vehicles are meeting people stepping up from smaller ones in the middle.
Full-size trucks and large SUVs are down in volume but still moving at strong prices because the buyers who can afford them are less sensitive to interest rates.
The EV trend is likely the messiest. With the tax credit gone, EV share has fallen back to roughly Q4 2024 levels. Tesla’s Model Y was one in three EVs sold in Q1, according to Cox Automotive’s Stephanie Valdez Streaty, but the brand is still down overall. Hybrids are picking up the slack here, which is why Toyota and Honda are holding share better than most.
The RAV4’s Q2 performance will be one of the most-watched numbers this year. Toyota executives are publicly unconcerned, expecting production to normalize by summer, and the redesigned model is selling every example that reaches a dealer – Cars.com data shows 12.9-day average dwell times. If the RAV4 snaps back in Q2, Toyota will have absorbed maybe the most graceful sales collapse in recent years. If it doesn’t, the ripple effect across the entire compact SUV segment will get very interesting very quickly.
The bigger question for the rest of 2026 is whether this is the new normal or a rough patch. Cox Automotive is sticking with its full-year forecast of 15.8 million units, about 2.6% below 2025.
That leaves plenty of room for things to get worse.
