Toyota sales suspension makes for interesting sales figures -- see last month's 20 best-sellers

The Toyota Camry slid from second to seventh place in the sales 
rankings after its sales were suspended for a sticky accelerator.
(photo by Brady Holt)

With three of December's 12 best-selling cars pulled from the market last month, January's ranking order saw some interesting shuffles among major month-to-month declines.

January sales are traditionally slow, but Toyota's government-mandated move to suspend sales of its Corolla and RAV4 -- and much of its inventory of the formerly best-selling Camry -- left that automaker hurting worse than most in the wake of allegations of widespread unintended acceleration.

"Formerly best-selling Camry" should give an idea of the scale of the company's problem. The midsize sedan was the second-best selling vehicle and the best-selling passenger car in the country in both December and in total 2009, but slid to a seventh-place slot -- worse performance than it's seen in well over a decade. (The Corolla nonetheless remained the best-selling compact car -- and outperformed the Camry.)

Where did those Toyota sales go? Honda, Nissan, and Chevrolet's midsize sedan sales thrived last month -- all outsold the Camry. The Chevrolet Equinox small SUV outsold the Toyota RAV4, and the Kia Sorento -- Kia's first top-20 appearance -- was just 23 units behind it. The Chevrolet Cobalt compact car made it onto the top ten list after spending many recent months below the top 20, and the Hyundai Elantra and Nissan Sentra made it to 20th and 21st place.

They didn't seem to go to Chrysler, even though it was among the automakers offering bonus rebates to Toyota trade-ins. Only one Chrysler product sold more than 5,000 units last month, and none cracked 10,000. Its number two sales slot was occupied by the Jeep Wrangler, which in most contexts would be considered a niche vehicle. 

See the full sales chart of the best-sellers below: