The 2027 Pickup Truck Market Is Collapsing (It’s Getting Ugly) – News Skip to content
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The 2027 Pickup Truck Market Is Collapsing (It’s Getting Ugly)

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Pickup truck sales are falling apart going into 2027.

And for the dealers stuck with lots full of trucks nobody wants, it’s getting ugly.

A healthy dealer lot carries about 60 days of trucks.

Right now, Ram dealers are sitting on 152 days, Jeep dealers on 169.

Buyers have had enough of the prices, the payments, and the screens.

So, here are the 11 pickups Americans are walking away from, and the last one is so lost that its own maker is reportedly pulling the plug early.

Number 11, the Ford Ranger.

Here’s the strange part.

There’s nothing wrong with this truck.

It tows 7,500 lb, it hauls, and Ford has been building Rangers in one form or another for over 40 years, these days right outside Detroit in Wayne, Michigan.

So, why is it sitting? Two reasons.

First, it’s getting squeezed from both sides.

If you want to save money, there’s the new Nissan Frontier, which sells for close to $3,000 less on average, and Nissan did a lot of things right on that truck.

If you need to tow something heavy, you spend a little more and drive home a base F-150.

Bigger cab, more payload, more truck.

And it’s not like the Ranger is short on engine.

The base one has a turbo 4 with 270 horsepower.

There’s a 2.

7 L V6 above it, and the Raptor version makes over 400 horsepower with a price that runs well into the 50s.

Second, the money.

The average new vehicle payment just hit a record $787 a month, and the average amount financed is now $44,600.

That’s basically a Ranger.

In the shop, the jobs nobody wanted were the ones in the middle.

Too big to be a quick fix, too small to be worth the big money.

That’s the Ranger right now.

People either go as cheap as they can or they buy the truck that does everything.

Cheap or capable sells, the middle sits.

If you already own one, here’s my one piece of advice.

That 10-speed automatic does not like old fluid, especially if you tow.

So, change it well before the long interval in the manual.

The Ranger is sitting at 135 days of supply with an average asking price of $42,800.

And if a truck this good is stuck, wait until you see what happened to the most careful company in the business.

Number 10, the Honda Ridgeline.

This one surprised me.

Honda is the careful one.

They build what they can sell and they normally run their lots lean, so they never have to throw money on the hood to move a vehicle.

Now the Ridgeline is at 140 days.

When Honda is stuck, you know the market is cold.

The Ridgeline’s problem has always been the same.

Truck guys don’t see it as a real truck.

It’s a unibody, built more like an SUV, and they look at it and say it’s a minivan with a bed.

Honestly, it’s one of the most practical trucks you can buy.

It rides smooth, it’s quiet, it has all-wheel drive and a V6 as standard, the same 3 and 1/2 L engine Honda has put in the Pilot and the Odyssey for years, and it has a lockable trunk hidden under the bed floor that’ll hold a cooler full of ice.

Try that with your F-150.

The tailgate opens down like a normal one or swings out to the side like a door, so you can reach the bed without leaning over it, and it’s rated to tow 5,000 lb, which covers a small camper or a boat.

But, think about who buys it.

Crossover shoppers who want a bed once in a while, and right now, one in four new vehicle loans run 7 years or longer.

That’s 7 years of payments on a vehicle you only half need.

When every payment feels heavy, nice to have is the first thing to go.

The Ridgeline is sitting at 140 days of supply with about 11,500 trucks for sale, averaging $45,300.

And the next truck on this list isn’t bought by weekend guys at all.

It’s bought by people who do the math for a living.

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Right, let’s carry on.

Number nine, the Ford F-250 Super Duty.

Think about who buys these.

Contractors, landscapers, fleet managers, people who put a truck to work every single day and run the numbers on every purchase.

And right now, those numbers are ugly.

A base F-250 XL starts in the mid-40s, and once you add the 6.

7 L Power Stroke Diesel that most working buyers want, you’ve added around $10,000 before you’ve picked a single other option.

Business loan rates are still high, so financing a work truck costs far more than it did a few years ago.

So, what do owners do? They keep the old truck running.

Another set of tires, another water pump, another 100,000 mi.

They wait for rates to come down, and they’re not alone.

The average vehicle on American roads is now 12.

8 years old, the oldest it has ever been.

Ask any contractor and you’ll hear the same complaint.

New trucks are too complicated and too expensive to repair, let alone too expensive to buy.

That’s the whole mindset in one sentence.

A paid-off truck beats a new payment every time.

Why would a landscaper trade a truck he owns outright for a $73,000 loan? Here’s what a lot of people miss about these trucks.

A work truck doesn’t wear out on a calendar.

It wears out by the hour.

Ford itself says 1 hour of idling puts about the same wear on an engine as 33 mi of driving.

So, a truck that sits running on job sites all winter can be much older inside than the odometer says, and fleet guys know it.

They track engine hours.

They change fluids on time, and they squeeze every last mile out of a truck before they replace it.

If you’re shopping for a used work truck instead, check three things before you pay.

The engine hours on the dash, so you know how hard it really worked.

The hitch and the bed, because a worn hitch and a beat-up bed tell you it towed heavy.

And the frame, especially in salt states, because rust is the one thing a good engine can’t fix.

Now, let me be straight with you.

The F-250 is still a great truck, and the 7.

3 L gas V8 Ford puts in the cheaper ones is about as simple and tough as engines get these days.

The truck isn’t the problem.

The price of getting into one is.

Right now, the market average is about 73 days to sell a new vehicle.

These Super Duty trucks are taking a median of 145 days, and there are around 46,000 F-250s sitting on lots.

But, at least the F-250 never pretended to be cheap.

The next truck did, and that’s exactly why buyers turned on it.

Number eight, [snorts] the Ford Maverick.

Remember a few years ago when you couldn’t get one? A hybrid truck that launched in 2021 at under $20,000 before destination, getting 42 miles to the gallon in the city.

Waiting lists ran past a year, and Ford actually stopped taking orders for the 2022 model because it couldn’t keep up.

So, what happened? First, Ford did what Ford does.

It ramped up production to catch up, and now there are too many.

Second, and I know a lot of you have strong feelings about this, the dealers.

When Mavericks were scarce, plenty of dealers added $5 to $10,000 in markups on the cheap truck, the people’s truck.

Buyers remember that.

Nobody forgets getting ripped off.

And the price isn’t what it used to be, either.

The average Maverick now sells for almost $34,000.

It’s built in Hermosillo, Mexico, which puts it right in the path of the import tariffs, and every one of those costs finds its way to the window sticker sooner or later.

Finance $34,000 at around 7%, and the payment looks like a full-size truck payment from just a few years ago.

That’s the real killer.

The Maverick was supposed to be the escape hatch from rising prices.

Now it’s caught in the same squeeze.

Back then, the Maverick was the cheap way in.

Today, it’s just another payment.

The truck didn’t change, the deal did.

Now, in fairness to the truck itself, the hybrid system in the Maverick is closely related to the one Ford has used in the Escape for years, and it’s a sound design.

The battery sits under the rear seat, the engine runs a simple cycle that’s easy on parts, and there’s no complicated transmission to rebuild.

It’s a smart little truck in other ways, too.

The 4 and 1/2 foot bed has slots molded into the sides, so you can build your own dividers with ordinary lumber.

And properly equipped, a Maverick is rated to tow up to 4,000 lb.

If you can get one near the old price, it’s still a smart buy, and it’s the truck I’d point a first-time truck buyer toward.

But that’s a big if.

Here’s how you tell a fair Maverick deal from a bad one.

Look at the out-the-door price, not the payment, because a long loan can hide a lot of markup.

There are about 43,000 Mavericks for sale, averaging $33,900 at 150 days of supply.

That’s 5 months of Mavericks for a truck that once had a waiting list a year long.

And before we get to the big Ford, there’s a number you need in your head first.

So, do a little math with me because this is the number nobody at the dealership says out loud.

Take a $60,000 truck, which is about what a nicely equipped full-size pickup sells for now.

Finance all of it at 7% over 84 months, the 7-year loan that one in four buyers is now signing.

Your payment comes to about $906 a month.

Over the life of that loan, you pay back around $76,000.

That’s $16,000 in interest, the price of a decent used car, just for the privilege of borrowing.

Now, here’s the part that really hurts.

3 years in, after 36 payments, you still owe around $38,000.

Trucks hold their value better than most vehicles, but a typical one has still lost about a third of its value by then, so yours is worth around 40,000.

You’re barely ahead.

And if you rolled the sales tax and the fees into the loan, the way most people do, you’re underwater.

If you need to trade it, that gap rolls into the next loan, and you start the whole thing again, deeper.

Dealers love a long loan for exactly this reason.

It makes an expensive truck look affordable on the monthly payment, and it keeps you coming back.

Long loans don’t make trucks cheaper.

They make them look cheaper.

One rule keeps you out of that trap.

If you can’t pay it off in 5 years, it’s too much truck.

That’s not an old mechanic being cheap, that’s arithmetic.

And it’s exactly the arithmetic the next truck runs into, only with bigger numbers.

Number seven, the Ford F-350 Super Duty.

Same story as the F-250, just bigger and pricier.

A base XL starts in the high 40s.

A Lariat runs into the mid-60s.

King Ranch and Platinum push past $80,000.

This is the truck for somebody pulling serious weight, running a fleet, or moving equipment that a half-ton pickup has no business touching.

Set up right with the high-output diesel and a gooseneck hitch, an F-350 is rated to pull around 38,000 lb.

That’s a lot of truck.

And here’s a detail a lot of first-time buyers don’t know.

If you use a truck and trailer like that for business and the combined weight rating goes over 26,000 lb with a trailer over 10,000, federal rules can require a commercial driver’s license.

So, some small business owners are buying capability that may need a commercial license to use for work.

Here’s what the manufacturers forget.

Work truck buyers judge a truck by how much money it helps them earn, not by the size of the screen.

Say you own a landscaping or excavation business.

Your current truck is paid off.

It’s got 170,000 mi on it, sure, but it starts every morning.

Are you really going to trade that for an almost $80,000 truck when the financing, the insurance, and the repairs could eat into your margins? Maybe, if you need the extra capacity.

Otherwise, probably not.

There’s a difference between wanting an F-350 and needing one.

Capability you don’t use is just money parked in your driveway.

And a lot of these are duallys with two tires on each side at the back.

That’s six tires to replace instead of four.

More weight, a wider truck to park, and higher insurance.

All worth it if you’re hauling a gooseneck every week.

Not worth it to look the part at the hardware store.

In the shop, the customers who came out ahead were never the ones with the biggest truck.

They were the ones with the right truck, serviced on time.

A 1-ton truck with its fluids changed on schedule will outwork a loaded one that’s been neglected every single time.

I’ve seen plain old work trucks with 300,000 mi on them still earning money, and fancy ones with 60,000 sitting in the bay waiting on a part.

Ford builds an extremely capable Super Duty, and I’m not knocking the truck.

I’m knocking the math.

More than 31,000 F-350s are sitting out there right now at 151 days of supply with an average selling price close to $77,000.

And that brings us to a brand whose own dealers have been begging for help since 2024.

Number six, the Ram 3500.

Now, this thing can be a monster of a work truck, especially with the Cummins diesel.

With the high output engine, it puts out over 1,000 lb feet of torque and is rated to tow more than 37,000 lb.

People buy these because they need to pull real weight, and I respect that.

But the bigger issue is what Stellantis is building, what dealers are stuck carrying, and what customers are actually willing to pay.

In the second quarter of 2026, Stellantis shipped 38% more vehicles to its North American dealers than a year earlier.

Sales to real buyers rose less than 6%.

Shipped is not sold, so why does that matter to you? Because dealers don’t just hold these trucks, they finance them.

It’s called floor plan financing.

The dealer borrows the money for every truck on the lot and every day a truck sits is another day of interest.

Think of it like a meter running in a taxi that never moves.

Back in 2024, Stellantis own dealer council wrote an open letter to the company warning that the disaster they had predicted had arrived.

Three months later, the company’s chief executive was gone.

Two years on, Dodge, Jeep, and Ram are all still carrying over 140 days of supply.

Now add the 3500’s own baggage.

Cummins agreed to pay a $1.

675 billion civil penalty over emissions defeat devices on Ram heavy-duty diesels, the largest Clean Air Act penalty in history.

The company denied wrongdoing, but it covered hundreds of thousands of trucks from 2013 on.

And owners keep talking about high-pressure fuel pump failures that can send metal through the whole fuel system.

When that pump lets go, it isn’t just a pump.

It can mean injectors, lines, the rail, sometimes the whole system.

Out of warranty, owners report that repair topping $10,000.

If you own one, two things help.

Buy your diesel from busy stations and change the fuel filters on time or early because clean fuel is what keeps that pump alive.

Here’s a trick if you’re shopping one.

Ask the salesman when that exact truck arrived on the lot.

Every dealer knows the date and a truck that’s been sitting since spring is costing them money every single day.

That date is your leverage.

The numbers aren’t pretty.

The Ram 3500 has 152 days of supply with around 11,000 trucks for sale averaging over $77,000.

And the truck that used to be RAM’s best-seller is in even deeper trouble.

Number five, the RAM 1500.

This used to be one of the best-selling vehicles in America.

Here’s the main issue.

RAM has lost touch with what the average truck buyer is willing to spend.

Don’t get me wrong, the RAM 1500 is a comfortable truck, probably one of the nicest riding full-size pickups out there thanks to the coil spring rear suspension RAM has used for years.

But somewhere along the way, RAM started treating pickup trucks like luxury SUVs.

Touchscreens as big as 14 and 1/2 in, expensive electronic systems, premium interiors, and trims that push close to $90,000 fully loaded.

Then RAM made a big bet.

For 2025, it dropped the Hemi V8 altogether and went to a twin-turbo six-cylinder.

Credit where it’s due.

The Hurricane is a strong engine, up to 540 horsepower in high output form, and it gets better fuel economy than the old V8.

But truck buyers didn’t want a brand new twin-turbo engine they had to trust for 200,000 mi.

They wanted the V8 they already knew.

Plenty of buyers said no thanks.

So for 2026, RAM brought back the 5.

7 L Hemi and I think that was a smart move.

Buyers asked for it and RAM listened.

But the bigger concern is long-term ownership.

Certain 2025 and 2026 RAMs have already been recalled for instrument displays that can go blank and for trailer tow modules that can leave you without trailer lights or trailer brakes.

That trailer module recall alone covered more than 300,000 RAM 1500s.

Older ones were recalled for rearview cameras that stopped working.

When you’re spending this kind of money, those aren’t exactly confidence boosters.

A loaded modern truck has dozens of computer modules talking to each other, running everything from the seats to the tailgate, and every one of them is a part that can fail years after the warranty is gone.

Here’s the rule I’d give anyone shopping a loaded truck.

Every screen is another part that can fail.

A cracked old-fashioned knob costs $20.

A dead display module out of warranty can cost a whole lot more.

If you do want a RAM 1500, the sweet spot is the middle of the range.

A Big Horn with the V8 gives you the engine people trust and the ride everybody likes without paying for the biggest screen and the most modules.

Dealers are reportedly knocking around 12% off sticker plus rebates.

Buyers are still walking.

The RAM 1500 is at 155 days of supply with an average selling price around 60,500.

Remember that truck I told you about at the start, the one whose own maker is giving up on it? We’re getting closer.

But first, RAM has one more truck on this list.

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Now, back to it.

Number four, the RAM 2500.

The RAM 2500 brings together just about every frustration I hear from truck owners.

Sky-high prices, increasingly complicated diesel systems, and serious worries about what these trucks will cost to keep running once the warranty runs out.

And if you’re buying one to make a living, even a repair the warranty covers can be expensive when your truck is sitting at the dealership instead of working.

A truck in the service bay earns nothing.

To be fair, a Cummins-powered RAM can be a serious towing machine, and even the 2500 is rated to pull close to 20,000 lb when it’s set up for it.

The 6.

7 L straight-6 is one of the toughest diesels ever put in a pickup, and plenty of them run past 300,000 mi.

The problem isn’t whether it has the muscle.

The problem is what that muscle costs.

A small contractor might love the truck and still walk away once the monthly payment and the insurance quote come back.

Here are the three things that sink the deal for most of them.

The sticker, which runs well into the 60s before you add anything.

The financing at rates that would have sounded crazy 5 years ago.

And the diesel emissions equipment, the particulate filter and the exhaust fluid system that adds cost and complexity every year you own it.

That last one deserves a minute because it catches people out.

A modern diesel burns off the soot in its filter by running extra hot for a while, and it needs a good long drive to do it.

Use one for short hops around town, and that filter can clog, the truck drops into a reduced power mode, and you’re at the dealer.

If most of your driving is under 20 minutes, a diesel is the wrong truck, however good the engine is.

And if you already own one, three habits keep it happy.

Give it a good long highway run at least once a week, so the filter can clean itself.

Never shut it off in the middle of a cleaning cycle if the dash tells you one is running.

And keep the exhaust fluid topped up with fresh fluid from a sealed jug because old fluid crystallizes and clogs the system.

The old diesels were simple.

These are a chemistry set on wheels.

And here’s the option a lot of salesmen won’t push.

The Ram 2500 also comes with a 6.

4 L gas Hemi.

If you tow heavy only a few times a year, the gas truck saves you somewhere around $10,000 upfront, skips all of that emissions plumbing, and runs on the same fuel as your lawn mower.

You give up some pulling power on a long grade.

For a lot of people, that’s a trade worth making.

Remember the floor plan meter I told you about? On this truck, it’s been running a long time.

The Ram 2500 comes in at 184 days of market supply with an average asking price of $68,500.

That’s more than 6 months of trucks, and the next one has a problem no rebate can fix because it starts with a plug.

Stop the count for 1 minute because there’s a truck that isn’t on this list anymore, and it tells you where the next few are heading.

The Ford F-150 Lightning.

A few years ago, it was going to change everything.

Ford built a whole new plant for it, the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center, and around 200,000 people put down reservations.

In October of 2025, a fire at an aluminum supplier stopped production.

Ford never restarted it, and Ford had good reason not to.

Its electric vehicle division lost more than 5 billion dollars in 2024 alone.

Every Lightning that rolled off the line was costing the company money.

That December, Ford announced the all-electric Lightning was done, to be replaced by a version with a gas engine on board to charge the battery.

By the middle of 2026, there were only a few hundred new Lightnings left on lots in the whole country, and most dealers had none at all.

That’s what a collapse looks like when it finishes.

The best-selling truck nameplate in America, and the electric version didn’t make it past the 2025 model year.

So, when you look at the next truck, remember the Lightning.

Number three, the GMC Sierra EV.

Average price, over $81,000.

When it launched, the first Denali Edition version had a sticker of $107,000.

The early adopters already bought theirs.

The regular truck buyer never bought in, and there’s a simple reason.

Hook up a trailer, and your range can drop by about half.

Most of that is the trailer pushing air, and the rest is weight.

The Sierra EV weighs well over 8,000 lb before you put anything in it, which is more than a lot of heavy-duty diesel trucks.

A truck rated for over 400 miles empty can turn into a 200-mile truck with a camper behind it, and that’s before you find a charger you can pull a trailer through.

And unless you’ve got a garage with a 240-V charger, which can cost $1,000 or more to put in, you’re living on public chargers.

Then, the federal EV tax credit went away at the end of September 2025 and now shoppers face the full sticker with no help.

Look at the 5-year cost.

Depreciation alone is almost $39,000.

Interest at today’s rates adds about 15,000 more.

Throw in insurance, charging and maintenance and you’re at roughly $74,000 over 5 years.

More than half of that is just the truck losing value.

Now, let me be fair to it.

If you’ve got solar on the roof, a charger in the garage and you drive under 100 miles a day without a trailer, an electric truck is quick, quiet and cheap to fuel and some owners love theirs.

That buyer exists.

There just aren’t enough of him to clear 6 months of trucks off the lots.

Here’s the contrast that matters.

A gas truck loses value slowly.

An expensive electric truck loses it fast.

And here’s something that doesn’t get said enough.

The battery pack in a truck like this weighs thousands of pounds on its own and that weight is hard on tires.

Owners of heavy electric trucks often report replacing tires sooner than they would on a gas truck and a good set of truck tires is well over a thousand dollars.

And there’s one more thing some GM owners didn’t sign up for.

In January 2025, the Federal Trade Commission moved to ban General Motors from selling drivers location and driving data for 5 years after reports that the company had passed that data to firms that sold it to insurers.

Some owners found out when their insurance went up.

Your truck was keeping notes on you.

That kind of thing makes a buyer think twice about an expensive truck that’s always online.

And it isn’t just the GMC.

Chevrolet builds its own version, the Silverado EV, in the same Detroit plant, and it’s fighting the same battle for the same small group of buyers.

GM saw the slowdown coming.

It backed off its big EV targets, cut Factory Zero in Detroit down to one shift, and cut more than 3,000 EV and battery jobs.

The Sierra EV is sitting at 199 days of market supply with an average selling price of $81,400.

That’s 6 and 1/2 months of $80,000 trucks, and the next truck was supposed to be the fun one.

Number two, the Jeep Gladiator.

When the Gladiator first showed up, people treated it like the coolest thing Jeep had built in years.

Wrangler styling, a removable roof, fold-down windshield, and a pickup bed.

It’s still the only pickup on sale where you can take the roof off and fold the windshield down, built in Toledo, Ohio, right next to the Wrangler.

I get the appeal, but the novelty wears off a lot faster than the loan does.

Here’s what nobody tells you in the showroom.

The Gladiator’s solid front axle is terrific for serious off-road articulation, but on the highway, it doesn’t ride like a Ridgeline.

There’s wind roar, a bed only about 5 ft long, and a truck that can feel like a compromise once you’re commuting in it every day.

Off-road hero, highway headache.

Some Jeeps with solid front axles also developed a reputation for a violent steering shake at highway speed, commonly called the death wobble, and owners have reported roof leaks around the removable panels.

If yours drips, check the seals and make sure the panels are latched in the right order before you pay anyone for a new top because the factory seals only work when everything sits exactly where it should.

Now, let me be fair.

Those aren’t guaranteed problems with every Gladiator, and a good alignment and tight steering parts fix most wobbles.

If you’ve got one that shakes, check the track bar, the tie rod ends, and the ball joints before you let anyone sell you a new steering box.

Most wobbles trace back to one of those worn parts, but buyers remember stories like that when they’re deciding whether to spend nearly $50,000, and Jeep has a price problem of its own.

For similar money, a buyer can shop a more traditional mid-size truck or a lightly used full-size truck with a bigger bed.

It’s also a long truck built on a Wrangler frame stretched out to make room for the bed, so the turning circle is wide, and a tight parking lot takes some work.

Think about the two buyers.

One wants a toy for the weekend, the other needs a truck every day.

The Gladiator charges both of them for a toy, so dealers are left trying to sell the Jeep lifestyle at a painful price, and with that much inventory sitting, you can expect them to deal.

If a Gladiator is the truck you really want, this might be the best time in years to buy one as long as you buy it for the trails and not for the commute.

Remember, Jeep as a brand is carrying 169 days of supply, the most of anyone.

The Gladiator is sitting at 200 days of market supply with an average asking price of $49,200 and roughly 15,800 for sale.

That’s more than half a year of Gladiators.

And that brings us to the strangest truck on this list, one with even more days of supply than the Gladiator and no future at all.

Number one, the Hyundai Santa Cruz.

It looks sharp, it’s nice inside, and reviewers like it.

So, why is nobody buying? Because it doesn’t know what it is.

It’s built on the Tucson platform in the same Alabama plant, basically a crossover with a bed on the back.

And that bed is just over 4 ft long.

Forget a sheet of plywood, forget the big camping gear, truck people walk right past it.

Now, in fairness, Hyundai packed a lot into that little bed.

There’s a lockable trunk under the floor and a built-in roll-up cover, and it drives like the comfortable crossover it is.

But a truck buyer doesn’t shop for a clever bed, he shops for a big one.

So, budget shoppers should love it, right? Except next door sits the Maverick, which usually starts cheaper.

Ford sells several Mavericks for every Santa Cruz Hyundai sells, and when you’re financing at around 7%, every dollar matters.

The turbo Santa Cruz makes 281 horsepower, but it comes with a dual-clutch transmission and plenty of buyers get nervous about how those feel in stop-and-go traffic and how they hold up long-term.

A dual-clutch is two clutches taking turns, and in traffic, they never get a rest.

On the open road, it shifts quick and smooth.

It’s the crawl that wears it.

If you own one, the best thing you can do is keep it out of the creep.

Let a gap open in traffic and then move instead of inching along with your foot hovering on the brake.

Too small for truck buyers, too pricey for value buyers, and the 5-year cost to own lands around $45,000.

Hyundai sold only about 25,500 of them last year despite a refresh.

Earlier this year, the Santa Cruz hit 222 days of market supply with more than 10,000 for sale averaging $36,400.

That’s the worst number on this whole list.

Then came the news.

Reports say Hyundai is ending Santa Cruz production about a year earlier than planned because of slow sales and growing inventory and there won’t be a second generation.

Hyundai says a real body-on-frame mid-size pickup is coming instead around 2029.

Even parts can get harder to find on a model with no future because suppliers stop making the pieces that only fit one vehicle.

Body panels and trim are usually the first to go.

So, if you’re thinking about one, here’s my honest take.

A discontinued vehicle can be a bargain because the dealer wants it gone.

Just know that resale values on a model nobody’s building anymore can drop fast, so buy it to keep, not to flip.

That’s the whole story of this market in one truck.

Price it past what people can afford to pay each month and nobody shows up.

Before I let you go, there’s one truck missing from this list, the Tesla Cybertruck.

And no, I didn’t forget it.

Tesla sells directly, so there’s no dealer lot supply number to compare.

But listen to this.

Back in 2019, the Cybertruck was unveiled with a promised starting price of $39,900.

When it finally reached customers 4 years later, the first ones delivered cost close to $100,000.

Tesla had said it had well over a million reservations.

In the third quarter of 2026, Tesla delivered just 8,295 vehicles in its other models category.

That’s down 48% from a year earlier.

And with the Model S and Model X out of production since April, that category is now mostly Cybertruck.

That’s a long way from a million.

Along the way, the Cybertruck was recalled for a stainless steel trim panel along the roof that could come loose while driving.

And Tesla launched a cheaper rear-wheel-drive version in April 2025, then dropped it about 5 months later.

Some of those early buyers are now trying to sell theirs used, and they’re finding out what a truck nobody else wants is worth.

If Tesla reported inventory the way dealers do, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it right here on this list.

So, here’s what to do if you’re shopping for a truck in the next few months.

First, check how long the exact truck you want has been sitting, because anything over 100 days means the dealer is paying interest on it every single day, and you have room to negotiate.

Second, get your financing quote from your own bank or credit union before you walk in, so the dealer’s rate has something to beat.

And when you’re ready to deal, ask for the out-the-door price in writing, every fee included, and don’t talk about a monthly payment until that number is settled, because the payment is where the extras hide.

Third, buy the truck you need, not the trim you’re sold, because every screen and every option is another payment and another part that can fail.

And if your current truck is paid off and running well, the smartest move might be to keep it, service it on time, and let somebody else pay for the collapse.

The best truck deal in America right now might be the one already sitting in your driveway.

The market will come back.

Prices will come down, rates will come down, and the dealer sitting on 6 months of trucks will have to make room for the 2027 models.

When that happens, the patient buyer wins.

Be the patient buyer.

If this helped you, press like before you go because it tells me to make more of these and subscribe so you don’t miss the next one.

Down in the comments, tell me which of these trucks you’d take home if the price was right, and what price would get you to sign because the truck with the most comments is the one I’ll take apart next piece by piece to show you what you’d really be paying for.

Don’t let them sell you a repair you don’t need.

I’ll see you in the next one.

Now, if anything today made you look twice at your own car, don’t wait for a warning light.

All 147 secrets are in my book over at keepyourcaralive.

com, and you’ve got 60 days to get every cent back.

Just open your phone’s camera and point it at the code on your screen now.

I’ll leave it up for you.

 

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