Texas has always loved a big truck. What’s new is that the rest of the auto industry is starting to bend around that love.
Fresh data from JD Power suggests the Lone Star State is on the verge of knocking California off its long-held perch as America’s most important car market. And the thing dragging it there is the pickup.
Texas is about to dethrone California
For decades, the industry treated California as the bellwether. Auto trends started there, the saying went, and the rest of the country followed.
That’s flipping. California’s share of US retail vehicle sales has slipped to 11.4 percent, down from 12.5 percent in 2019. Texas has climbed the other way, to 10.8 percent from 9.3 percent. The gap that used to be three points is now six-tenths of one.
Pickups: 27% of sales
New-car $ spent: #1 in U.S.
Pickups: 17% of sales
New-car $ spent: #2
JD Power, 2026. California still sells slightly more vehicles, but Texas has led the nation in new-vehicle dollars spent since 2024.
And by the metric automakers actually care about, Texas already won. It has led the entire country in total dollars spent on new vehicles since 2024, even though California still moves slightly more cars.
The reason is sitting in every Texas driveway. Pickups make up about 27 percent of new-vehicle sales in Texas, against roughly 17 percent in California. Trucks are expensive, so a truck-heavy state spends more per sale, and that’s what pushes Texas to the top of the money chart.
Here’s the twist, though. You’d assume all those big trucks mean Texas is the flashy, status-chasing market. It’s the opposite. JD Power found Texas buyers actually skew toward mainstream brands, while California is the one with the high lease rates and the luxury-badge habit. Texans just buy real trucks, and real trucks cost real money.
Darren Whitehurst, who runs the Texas Automobile Dealers Association, frames it as work plus play. Texans buy trucks for business and hauling, he says, then load up the bed and head out for the weekend, with “a lot of good opportunities for off-roading” across the state.
One more thing that breaks the stereotype: even in oil country, EV sales in Texas have held steadier than in most states, while EV demand slides elsewhere. The Texas truck market isn’t quite the cliché it looks like.
Why every automaker suddenly wants a midsize truck
Whitehurst’s advice to automakers was blunt: if you don’t sell a pickup, start. Most of the industry already got the memo.
You’ve got the bare-bones budget truck from Slate, Ford’s cheap electric pickup, Scout clawing its way back from the dead, and even brands you wouldn’t expect lining up.
That list includes Hyundai, which plans to drop the little Santa Cruz and start building a body-on-frame midsize pickup in 2029 to go hunting for the Toyota Tacoma. Mitsubishi is jumping back in with a Nissan-sourced midsize truck. The Ram Dakota returns for 2028. And Volkswagen is wading in too.
Why midsize? Because Texas and markets like it proved trucks aren’t just for towing and hauling anymore. Plenty of people who never leave the city still want one in the driveway.
It’s no shock automakers are piling on. Pickups carry fat profit margins thanks to pricey trims and endless customization. And the industry has a long history of chasing exactly this kind of signal.
The SUV mistake, round two?
Remember how we ended up with almost no cheap cars and a sea of oversized, overpriced SUVs? Automakers decided that’s what Americans wanted, because wealthier buyers kept snapping up big SUVs while average families quietly got priced out of the cheap cars they actually needed.
The polls told a different story. Americans do want cheap cars. There just aren’t any cheap enough anymore.
That left a lot of expensive SUVs parked on dealer lots. So will trucks hit the same wall?
Maybe not, and here’s why. A big chunk of these new entries are aimed at the cheaper, smaller end. The average full-size pickup now goes for about $66,000, while the average midsize runs closer to $42,700. That’s a $23,000 gap, and it’s exactly where buyers are heading.
The full-size trucks still start in the low $40,000s, by the way. The average only climbs to $66K because buyers keep loading up on Lariat, Limited, High Country and Denali trims. The appetite for a genuinely affordable truck is wide open, and for once, a lot of automakers are aiming right at it.
